Kasa no Hone

Lyrics in English:

The ribs of the umbrella

Have fallen apart;

The paper is also torn,

But with bamboo

Tied together.

Do not throw it away.

Though I

Also am torn,

Don't desert me.

Even His Own Brothers - A Poem

Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him. (John 7:3-5)

1.

He shook off the taunts of the well intentioned:

The right time for me has not yet come.

Had he not said the same to his mother

A few months ago, when the wine had run dry

And the master of the wedding had asked

For assistance? Had he then, any more than now,

Been concerned with social niceties or

The demands of public life? Had he courted

Then, or now, the limelight?

Yet that day the best wine had flowed:

Wine to gladden the heart. Though

Evading the piercing glances of

A public who demanded to know each step he took,

Whose clothes he wore and which brands he would support

When he overthrew Rome, or those who poked him

With sticks and said, Show us a miracle, Christ,

He would not neglect the work he came to do:

The bringing of new wine, the birth of a new kingdom,

In and yet not of this world that he trod.

2.

For you any time is right,

Said the brother whom they did not understand,

The eldest, the crazed one, the public magician who

Refused to turn up to his most glamorous gigs.

The world cannot hate you,

but it hates me because…

By now they had tuned out. They played a flute for him

Yet he would not dance, a dirge but he would not mourn.

There was no pleasing this one.

Back to their homes they went,

To the regularity of wood shaped with chisel and plane,

While in Judea he hid himself until just the right time

To shake up the self-congratulating party with

The harsh, dissident cymbal of the truth.

Boxing Day Poem

A brief scan of Wikipedia to find out about the origins of Boxing Day led me to this interesting tidbit:

In the UK, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older English tradition: in exchange for ensuring that wealthy landowners' Christmases ran smoothly, their servants were allowed to take the 26th off to visit their families. The employers gave each servant a box containing gifts and bonuses (and sometimes leftover food).

Interested by this, I decided to write a poem about Samuel Pepys and his family Christmas. It's quite silly but I feel like the seriousness of my posts of late warrant something a bit more ridiculous.

Christmas with the Pepyses

Thence by coach to my shoemaker’s and paid all there, and gave something to the boys’ box against Christmas. (From the Diary of Samuel Pepys, 19 December 1663)

In honour of age-old traditions

Wherein, at the festive time of the the year,

Those who had much would generously share

With those in less fortunate positions,

Mr Pepys took his coach to the shop

Of his shoemakers and there paid the lot

Of his bill for the year, and before he did trot

Away in his coach, he chose then to drop

Something to the boys’ box against Christmas.

The expression is odd, though Pepys too was odd

And his diary haphazard: that year he forgot

To write about Christmas Day, which must

Have been a riotous day for the Pepyses.

In one other year, his diary declares that he passed

Christmas Day with his wife and the boy whom he asked,

Or instructed, to read from Descartes before sleepses

And play for his master upon his sweet lute.

His wife sat undressed until ten, at the task

Of fixing a petticoat. (One has to ask

Why Pepys went forth in his waistcoat

That morning while she stayed boxed up at home.

His sympathy for her is clear, however.

Poor wretch he called her, and in such cold weather

A man deserves a vest of his own.)

Pepys slept soundly that night, his mind

In mighty content, he declared.

And ask though we might, if the others all shared

His content, the answer we sadly can’t find.

Of all the crowns Jehovah bears (Christmas Day)

Having said that I would not have time to write anything on Christmas Day, I find myself in the lull period after lots of food and before we have energy enough to do anything else, and am able to post something wonderful that I read last night. It's by my favourite eighteenth-century poet and hymnist, William Cowper, a man who deep depression forced to cling more closely to the truth than more stable minds might have done. This is the last in a sequence of hymns about the names of God, and is wonderfully appropriate for Christmas Day.

Jehovah-Jesus

My song shall bless the LORD of all,
My praise shall climb to his abode;
Thee, Saviour, by that name I call,
The great Supreme, the mighty GOD.

Without beginning, or decline,
Object of faith, and not of sense;
Eternal ages saw him shine,
He shines eternal ages hence.

As much, when in the manger laid,
Almighty ruler of the sky;
As when the six days' works he made
Fill'd all the morning-stars with joy.

Of all the crowns JEHOVAH bears,
Salvation is his dearest claim;
That gracious sound well-pleas'd he hears,
And owns EMMANUEL for his name.

A cheerful confidence I feel,
My well-plac'd hopes with joy I see;
My bosom glows with heav'nly zeal,
To worship him who died for me.

As man, he pities my complaint,
His pow'r and truth are all divine;
He will not fail, he cannot faint,
Salvation's sure. and must be mine.

Pax and Shalom (Advent #16)

And so this is Christmas.

Actually, it isn't. It's Christmas Eve in Australia, but I suspect that, with the busyness of a typical Christmas day, there won't be much time for blogging. So I have decided to end my Advent series here, on Christmas Eve, with this, my sixteenth post.

And Christmas Eve, I think, should be a time to reflect. That's the value, if there is any, in John and Yoko's Christmas classic, the horridly named "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". It causes us to ask the question: are things any different this Christmas than they were the last? John and Yoko certainly don't bring Jesus into it, but He's everywhere in the assumptions of the song. If war should be over and peace flourishing, then why is Christmas any more of a time to wonder, and to mourn, at the lack of peace in our world? Surely only because Jesus came to institute a world of peace, and we have not yet found the reality of that.

Unfortunately, I think we've missed the point of peace.

Many great Bible teachers today, Tim Keller being perhaps the most obvious one, will tell you that God's people were supposed to be a people of peace, shalom peace, deep, abiding peace - most importantly, peace with God. The trouble was, humans couldn't easily live in peace with God, because He is utterly righteous, and they were, and still are, utterly not. So for Israel to be a people of shalom, God had to declare peace with them. Then they could live in peace with Him.

And sometimes that succeeded, and mostly it didn't. Not because God's peace failed in any way, but because Israel failed to live in the terms of that peace. They continually took it for granted, and continually taunted a righteous God with their sins.

The real shame of Christmas 2011 should not be that we have not yet come to live in a world where humans live in peace with each other, but that we still do not know our creator and therefore do not know His Shalom.

You see, when the angels appeared to the shepherds and made that glorious declaration that we love to put on our Christmas cards, they meant far more than we might think:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

Firstly, it isn't quite the same as mere goodwill to all men - generally respecting and liking each other. Far from it. Those words were spoken to a people who were crushed under the yoke of Roman oppression. Did the angel want the shepherds simply to give Christmas cards to the Roman centurions or offer them a cup of tea or a swig of brandy? Was this little more than a cosmic declaration of the kind of good-old-chap chummery that we hear about in stories of enemy armies having a cease fire over Christmas, and the like?

No, it was peace bought with man and God: peace bought by God coming into the battleground to negotiate the terms of peace. And the terms of peace? Here we have to look ahead, to Easter. Here we have to look to the cross.

If John and Yoko and the rest of us really want peace on earth, we need to look to the glorious God in whom we will find the deepest peace. But we need first to accept that we are the problem, and then humbly accept that He is the only solution.

Many will not be willing to accept this - not this year, not the next.

But if, perhaps, you are reading this, then you possibly already know this, or are willing to think about it, or believe it with all your heart. And then, perhaps, you too can help declare the arrival of a peace that may not look like we expect and may be far more humbling for us to find, but a peace which is the deepest, most significant, most sustainable peace that we can ever find.

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

I am a poor boy too (Advent #15)

There is no Biblical text for today's post. That's because it concerns a story that you won't find in the Bible. You may know it: a poor boy who hears of the news of his king's arrival; he has nothing to offer the king but his drum, which he plays for his king with all his heart.

I used to cringe at this song. It seemed to fit alongside "Little Donkey" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" as the least Biblical carols we sing. Then I heard the sublime Future of Forestry's version of it, and everything suddenly changed. The story, I realised, may appear nowhere in the Bible, but that seemed less relevant than what the song was about: a boy with nothing to offer but a drum, a humble drum presumably, to proclaim the coming of the King. He had no gold, frankincense or myrrh to offer; but then neither did the shepherds; neither did Simeon, who had only the wisdom of devout old age to offer the Messiah.

It also makes me think a little about worship: about how feeble and humble our offerings so often are, but how pleased God is with them. It makes me think of the King Himself, who, when declaring the constitution of His Kingdom, began with these words:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

Your spirit may have much to offer your king this year, or it may have very little. Come to Him anyway. Sing to Him out of your riches, sing to Him out of your poverty. Offer Him your finest gold, offer Him your humblest drum. All He asks is that you come to Him, and acknowledge Him as your King.

Over the Hills and Everywhere (Advent #14)

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)

Towards the end of the school year, one of our senior teachers led a devotion in which he considered what it might have been like for Jesus to be born into our age in history. The shepherds, he suggested, would have posted pictures on Facebook of themselves with Mary and baby; they would have updated their statuses to make everyone else wish they were there and be envious because they weren't.

I wasn't entirely sure of his assessment of our generation, but it got me thinking. When Christopher Hitchens and Kim Jong Il died in the last few days, I heard as soon as the New York Times posted the newsflash: my iPad said "ding" to notify me of the update. But when Jesus was born the news was only broadcast locally. Only shepherds heard the angels singing; only the Magi paid attention to the herald in the stars. The news was there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, but few saw it and fewer still heard it. The teachers of the law whom Herod consulted gave the doctrinally correct answer about where the Messiah would be born and showed not the remotest interest in finding out for themselves if this had indeed happened. Would it have been any different if the media were there to broadcast it? Would we be any more attentive?

Then last night I watched Lars von Trier's latest offering, the visceral masterpiece, Melancholia. Though beginning with a detailed and rich depiction of a wedding going slowly, subtly wrong, von Trier gradually introduces the pivotal plot device of the mysterious planet Melancholia which, some say, is hurtling towards the earth. Kiefer Sutherland's John insists that no, it isn't, that the real scientists know what the alarmists deny: that the planet will only pass us by, not hit us. But Charlotte Gainsbourg's Claire does not believe him and regularly goes online to see what the "alarmists" are saying. Which of them is right is adjudicated by the film's devastating denouement, already foreshadowed in the spectacularly understated prologue - a series of extended single shots set to Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" showing the varied forms of emotional and physical desolation the characters encounter.

The film, in the end, offers decisively little hope, seemingly presenting annihilation as the only answer; and perhaps von Trier is right, though not quite in the form that he has shown. One of the more interesting elements of the film, however, is the way in which characters wrestle with crisis. Kirsten Dunst portrays Justine, the deeply depressed heroine whose "melancholy" paradoxically dissipates as the crisis approaches. Only she seems equipped to deal with what comes. John, on the other hand, represents the laissez-faire attitude so many of us have towards the idea of an apocalypse. A Christianity Today review of the film cites media analyst Neil Postman as noting "that it is impossible to look at the world as a serious place when a newscaster can solemnly inform viewers about a military study touting the inevitability of nuclear war and be followed by a commercial for Burger King". Or, in simpler terms, Susan Sontag once noted that a typical scenario for the past century is that an apocalypse is predicted and then nothing happens.

But the world is a much more alarming place than we can quite grasp. The creator of the universe was born into a manger and only a few people noticed. When the end comes, will we be as indifferent, as able to ignore it? Jesus, who would know, suggested it would be otherwise:

“So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather." (Matthew 24:26-28)

Perhaps this Advent we would do well to pray that our eyes might be open and our ears attentive. When the newsflash arrives, we won't be able to ignore it, but we also may not have time to respond.

The despised things that are not (Advent #13)

Here are Jesus' credentials:

- Born to a pregnant teenager, in a tiny, insignificant village.

- Descended from failed and disgraced kings, at least one prostitute, one girl who coerced her father into sleeping with her, a woman from Moab (descended from one of Lot's daughters who coerced him into sleeping with her) and the unnamed "wife of Uriah" - Bathsheba, whom David saw bathing on the roof.

Here are Jesus' heralds:

- Shepherds: dissolute, untrustworthy.

- Magi: pagan, and above all foreign; astrologers, whom the Jewish law condemned.

Here is Jesus' geographical pedigree:

“Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” (John 7:52)

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. (John 1:46)

---

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the LORD. (Isaiah 55:8)

---

This is the God of whom Christmas reminds us: He who "chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are" (1 Corinthians 1:28). And, if you're anything like me, and your credentials, your pedigree or your innate qualities are nothing to recommend you to an almighty and righteous God - then this is a very good thing indeed.

The light shone bright - A Poem (Advent #12)

The light shone bright, Bethlehem-ward, but

There was little else to guide them: no signs on the door,

No royal procession, no red carpet.

Watch out, the guides might have said, for the smell of cow dung:

Not a fragrance, perhaps, befitting a king,

But such was – and is – our King.

A newborn, no doubt he slept when they came to the door.

What did they say, I wonder? Is there a king in the house?

The teenage, virgin bride flushed, post-labour, almost certainly tired.

The mother will not yet be ready to receive visitors, our modern-day

Matrons would no doubt pronounce.

Yet, strangers – aliens – that they were, they

Found their way into the stable, and gave the humble

Child-king the reception he deserved.

Not that this would set the tone for the rest of his life.

Yet in this moment he was – almost – acknowledged in a manner

Befitting his natural state. But was that really the point?

Surely he could have commanded a royal party every night, if he chose.

Instead, his final night he spent in a garden, just

A few close friends (they fell asleep later on that night),

A kiss in the moonlight, a shaky prayer; Father, take this cup…

Does the story end there? We wait, on the edge of our seats.

Yet we’d prefer it, I suspect, if that was the end.

He’s easier to take, as a baby, or – dare we admit it – when dead.

Alive, a broken king, his life defies all onto which we cling;

And rightly so, yet awkward for sure. There’s no option,

Before such a king, but to bow: all else is treason.

He knows, of course, that most of us won’t.

His brow was crushed by ones like us – the ones, I suppose,

Who would not find their way to the stable no matter

How many stars there were to guide the way.

Joy, joy (Advent #11)

There is much talk about joy at Christmas. One of the most famous carols that we sing at this time of year is, of course, "Joy to the World", and for many, I suppose, Christmas is a joyful time.

But it's widely accepted that, for many, it also isn't joyful. Families come together to share food, but they do not always come together in spirit. Christmas can be more a time of squabbling than reconciliation. And for some Christmas does not bring them closer to their families because, for whatever reason, they no longer have a family. When a tragedy occurs this time of year the newsreaders bemoan its happening "this close to Christmas", a statement that is, on one hand, meaningless (a tragedy is terrible at any time of year) but also reveals the fact that the Universe does not instantly conspire to bring about happiness simply because it is Christmas.

To an atheist, this is further evidence that there is no God ordering things. To an agnostic, it might be further reason to withhold judgement. But to a believer, it need not be troubling, though for many it will be. We think that "joy to the world" means that we should somehow all be happy, all the time. I remember the first time I was unhappy on Christmas day, and I didn't know what to do with the feeling; it did not fit what we consider to be the purpose of the season. But the joy that the Gospel proclaims is a deep joy: one that transcends circumstances, one even that transcends emotions. I am naturally a fairly melancholy person. Over the past year I have been more melancholy than usual. But the Gospel has not failed. The joy the Gospel brings is not one that gives quick fixes or boosts in mood. It is a Gospel that gives a joy that nothing in this world - not family squabbling, not death, not depression - can squash.

In one of Jesus' first public statements, he read a passage from Isaiah which declared what he was here to do. The passage, in its original context, is rich with this deeper, abiding joy:

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a]

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:1b-3a)

I would not say that I fully understand this. I would not say that at every moment I can physically feel the joy that Jesus' coming brings. I would not even say that I feel it terribly often at the moment. But that's okay. The joy that Jesus holds out is untouched. And one day, or night - we do not know - He will step down from the clouds, and sweep me up into His joy that He has been keeping waiting for me.

You who are too little (Advent #10)

Micah 5:1-6

A week or so ago, during staff morning devotions at school, one of the teachers shared some video footage of short interviews he had done with students in our primary school, asking them questions about God. One of the questions was what they were thankful to God for. Many knew the right answer to give at this point, and only a few perhaps spoke from their hearts. One young student amusingly said he was thankful to God "for dying for our sins and giving us baby Jesus". This answer, I must admit, intrigued me; what was the distinctiveness of the gift of baby Jesus, apart from the fact that He would grow up to die for our sins? The two gifts did not seem connected in this student's mind?

Of course, the incarnation is not only significant for Jesus' death, though that is the ultimate point of it all. And, while prayers to or about Baby Jesus unavoidably make many think of racing car driver Ricky Bobby and his painfully ludicrous dinner-table grace, there is surely significance in the fact that, while "Jesus did grow up", He also came to this earth as a baby.

One of the Old Testament prophecies which often comes out at Christmas is found in Micah 5, in which the prophet assures Israel that they will be saved from their enemies, through the Messiah being born into a highly unlikely place - Bethlehem, a small and insignificant village, famous only for being also the birthplace of King David. That king, though the greatest king of Israel, was also notable for being, at first glance, not the sort you would choose as king: he was short and a bit weedy, compared to his tall, strapping brothers. But God chose him, and chose Bethlehem, and chose to be born as a baby in Bethlehem.

And the meaning of this is? Certainly not that God is insignificant or small. The absurdity of Ricky Bobby's grace is not that he acknowledges the truth that God came as a baby, but that he thinks he can view God however he likes. It isn't only his view of God as a baby that is questionable but that he uses his prayer for product placement and as a means of impressing God so that he can win the race the next day. This kind of view of God misses the point altogether; He is not to be remade in our image.

No, but it is an amazing, wonderful mystery: that God, though all-powerful, chose to be humble, to honour the small and insignificant, what Paul later calls "the despised things that are not", honoured in order to "nullify the things that are".

Is it simplistic to say that this shows us how much value God places on the things we neglect? It is certainly not the full theological significance of the incarnation. But it is true, and it is something that, today at least, it is worth pausing on, thinking about, and thanking God - all-powerful, truly omnipotent God - for.

Why no-one buys gold, frankincense and myrrh anymore (Advent #9)

Well, it was probably too much to expect that I could make it through an entire series of posts on Advent without once railing against the consumerism that is rife at this time of year. And certainly a trip into the city today, past the Myer Christmas Window and through a Melbourne Central absolutely packed with Christmas shoppers, I have come home with much fuel for such a vitriolic anti-consumerist post.

But I'm not going to write it. And here are my reasons.

#1: Our culture is consumerist at all times of year. Christmas might see more spending, but we spend too much all year round and replace God with more material things than we could ever need. Some might suggest that consumerism is particularly abhorrent at Christmas because it means that we are using God as an excuse to spend money. That is certainly my gut response to what I saw today, but on further reflection I'm not so convinced. God is hardly forefront in most people's minds at this time of year; there is no conscious justification of consumerism with God in mind. Rather, family and generosity and love are the excuses we use. So if anything is being blasphemed, it is these secular values, not God. The fact is, He deserves to be honoured every day of the year, in every way. Our failure to do this is the great sin we are all guilty of. Christmas consumerism only magnifies the sin; it is not the heart of the sin.

#2: In some small way, the giving of gifts can point us to God. The rest of the year, we spend obsessively on ourselves. At Christmas time, that spending is directed towards others. It may be misguided and misplaced, but surely it represents something that can be channelled carefully into some sort of openness to the Gospel, more than our blind, self-focused consumerism of the rest of the year can.

#3: The problem is not that we are spending extravagantly at Christmas. The problem is that we are spending the wrong way: spending the wrong currency and spending it on the wrong goods. The magi knew what to spend their wealth on when they came to Jesus, and they knew what to buy: gifts to honour Him, yes, but gifts also to anoint Him for His burial. You see, the gifts they gave pointed to the gift He gave: the gift of Himself.

Though a king worthy to be honoured with gold, He was found by them in a completely humbled state. Though worthy of anointing as king, He was anointed for burial, the act in which, bizarrely, paradoxically, His true glory as king was seen - and so the gift of myrrh. And, though He came to a place where the "presence of God", the Temple, was soon to be destroyed, His very presence on earth and His sacrifice brought that presence to us - and so the gift of frankincense, the incense of the Temple he came to replace. His life was a costly gift; and so we too should give of ourselves at great price, for we too were bought for a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). We should give to Him, and give that others might know Him.

Perhaps, then, the right response to consumerism at Christmas is not to see it as a distinctive evil but as something that represents the bigger problem: that we live in a culture, in a society, which, 2000 years later, still fails to honour God as it should. Perhaps we, on walking through our city streets this Christmas, should feel something a little like Eliot's Magi on returning to their homes:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Speak Tenderly to Jerusalem (Advent #8)

Comfort, comfort my people

says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,

and proclaim to her

that her hard service has been completed,

that her sin has been paid for... (Isaiah 40:1-2a)

When John the Baptist was asked by the Pharisees to give his job description and show his credentials, he responded first by denying the positions of honour that they suggested to him and secondly by quoting the prophet Isaiah, describing himself as:

A voice of one calling:

"In the desert prepare

the way of the Lord..." (Isaiah 40:3a)

And what was that desert in which he called, or the desert in which the way was to be prepared? For Israel there was one desert which resonated in their minds: the wilderness in which they wandered for 40 years after escaping Egypt but before entering the Promised Land. And when Isaiah wrote these words, he was speaking to an Israel that was facing another desert - the desert of exile in Babylon. When John the Baptist came preparing the way of the Lord, Israel was in another desert - the desert of Roman occupation. The comfort of God felt far, far away.

When Jews quoted Old Testament scripture, they were not only talking about the exact words quoted but the whole context that the scripture came from. It was expected that their audiences would know the background and fill in around the quote. So John the Baptist was not only identifying himself; he was identifying the age that had come. And that was a time of comfort for God's people.

The church in the West is sufficiently comfortable and complacent that we seem therefore to miss a huge amount of what Jesus came to do. We don't understand what it meant to set captives free, because we don't understand what it is to be captives. We sing about Immanuel "ransoming captive Israel" but the words are potentially no more than figures of speech.

Perhaps the persecuted church could teach us something about longing for Jesus' second coming as first century Jews longed for the first. Perhaps they could help us understand Simeon's joy on meeting "the consolation of Israel". Perhaps then it might mean something to read Isaiah 40 and to know that, when Jesus came, He fulfilled all of that, and that we who believe are just on the cusp of knowing and experiencing precisely what that means.

So for our music today we have something a bit different. I have found myself unexpectedly discovering some music of late that draws heavily on Jewish and Middle Eastern roots in capturing the emotions of some of the Psalms and prayers of the Old and New Testaments. For this, I can strongly recommend Aaron Strumpel's two animal-themed albums, but today I would like to share a version of the Lord's Prayer sung by highly eccentric and experimental outfit Psalters. You can, I think, imagine that you are seated with the early church, waiting, hoping, begging to God for the consolation of His people. It's quite long, and it isn't an easy listen. But sit back, take it in, and perhaps then read Isaiah 40 and pray that these words will truly resonate with you this Advent.

"The beginning shall remind us of the end..." (Advent #7)

Last night, while preparing a class on T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi", I found another one of his wonderful "Ariel" poems which so perfectly suited the Advent season that I decided to share it with you all today.

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees

There are several attitudes towards Christmas,
Some of which we may disregard:
The social, the torpid, the patently commercial,
The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight),
And the childish - which is not that of the child
For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel
Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree
Is not only a decoration, but an angel.
The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder
At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext;
So that the glittering rapture, the amazement
Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree,
So that the surprises, delight in new possessions
(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell),
The expectation of the goose or turkey
And the expected awe on its appearance,
So that the reverence and the gaiety
May not be forgotten in later experience,
In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium,
The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure,
Or int he piety of the convert
Which may be tainted with a self-conceit
Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children
(And here I remember also with gratitude
St. Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):
So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas
(By "eightieth" meaning whichever is the last)
The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy,
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

He did what the angel commanded (Advent #6)

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly...

Of all the ways that God could have chosen to come to earth - this. An unplanned teen pregnancy; a scandal falling over a young couple's engagement. If your head doesn't swim a little at all of this, you probably aren't thinking about it terribly much. Is this the triumphant way that a king comes to be among His people? Is this the way we would expect the Infinite to make His presence felt in His creation?

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel' - which means, 'God with us'...

And somehow it all seems part of the plan, first signalled by the prophet Isaiah talking to Ahaz, a fairly reprobate King of Judah. That king thought that he could use God for his own purposes, and feigned piety when Isaiah caught him out. That time, the prophecy of Immanuel - God being with Israel - was not necessarily a word of encouragement. God could not be put in a box; He was not Israel's great nationalistic Secret Weapon. Who could predict what God can do? Who could know His mind? Who could ever hope to contain Him?

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus...

And so we have a great mystery. No-one can contain God, yet a fourteen-year-old girl gave birth to Him. No-one can predict Him or box Him, yet He has made His plans known to us. And He is with us. He came to be with us in Jesus, and He remains with us in the very same way at the end of Matthew's Gospel as He is at the beginning (Matt 28:20).

Joseph and Ahaz both heard the news that God would be with them. But for each one, the news had vastly different implications. How, I wonder, does it strike our hearts today to think of, to prepare for, God being with us?

The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel...

(All Bible passages quoted come from Chapter 1 of Matthew's Gospel)

Is anything too wonderful for God? (Advent #5)

Luke 1:26-38

In my last post a few days ago I commented on the strange paradox that we see often in our society today: that we are surrounded by wonders yet so often fail to believe in the wondrous aspects of the Bible. There is, perhaps, an explanation for this: though we do not understand much of what surrounds us - the physics required, say, to allow a plane to fly off into the clouds, seemingly defying all laws of gravity; or the software programming used to make iBooks with translucent pages that we can turn with our fingers - we trust that somehow "science" has made each of these wonders possible. We couldn't do them ourselves, we reason, but we just don't have the know-how. Someone else does. But parting the Red Sea? That's impossible. A virgin giving birth to a baby? No-one can do that.

Which means, essentially, that we have elevated science to the true, marvellous miracle-worker of our age, but demoted God to the role of a fairly subservient heavenly janitor; all He can do is move around and tidy up what is already there, as if the laws of physics, which He created, are somehow too powerful for Him to overrule. Many have already commented wisely on the way in which the "miracles" of technology that happen daily have numbed us to the wonder of it all, one article from Christianity Today and the YouTube clip it references both expressing this phenomenon particularly well. The attendant effect that I often barely notice in my own life is that, though we expect great and marvellous deeds daily from our iPads, we expect nothing of an almighty God.

In a time well before iPads were even conceivable (even books with words printed on them and bound together were still a good millennium and a half away), a young girl was faced with something that still defies modern science and is therefore dismissed as nonsense: she was told that, despite being a virgin, she would have a child. On asking how this was possible, she was given a response that, to modern scientific readers, might sound like nonsense:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Not really a scientific explanation, but what could possibly be lacking from it? I do not ever feel the need to understand the mechanics of how exactly it is that I can tap away at a few black keys and hit a few buttons and suddenly become a globally published author. I just know I can, because I trust that my computer and those who have programmed it and the thing we call the Internet knew what they were doing when they set up the whole system in which I now can simply luxuriate. Likewise for Mary. How can a virgin give birth? To a human constrained by the law that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it seems more or less impossible. To a God who made everything out of nothing - creation ex nihilo, the theologians call it - it is surely no harder than what He has already done, no harder for Him to manage than any of what we take utterly for granted in our everyday lives.

I don't question the reality of what my computer can do, simply because it is beyond my understanding. I see the proof of it daily. So too, Mary, whose virgin body would soon begin to show all the signs of being with child, would surely have known before too long that the impossible had happened. For nothing is impossible with God.

With Clouds Descending (Advent #4)

This afternoon, as part of a unit on "Future Worlds", I set my Year 11 English class the task of writing a short piece about the future, using the opening phrase, "In twenty years from now..." While they wrote their pieces, I wrote my own. By the time I had finished it, it felt remarkably Advent-related, so now I am sharing it with you.

In twenty years from now, we will not know how much our world has changed. The rapid growth of our planet and the ever-increasing, ever-changing world of technology will conspire to make us blind to change.

We will wonder: was there ever a world in which we had to leave our houses to go shopping? Did we ever not drive in cars that talk to us, remember the route to work for us, avoid oncoming traffic for us? And yet we will still say, “It is not enough.” We will still say, “It is not enough.” We will still complain when our train is late by a nanosecond, when information on any topic in the world cannot be instantly accessed from wherever we stand at any point in time. We will still say, “Miracles do not happen”, even though all around us will be phenomena that in any previous age would be declared great signs and wonders.

And when we find we still cannot make grey skies turn blue, still cannot reach heaven with our iPhones, or whatever we will call them then; when we find that God is no further from us nor closer to us regardless of the speed of our internet connection, we will still shake our fists at the sky in rebellious fury, still retreat into our labs to turn gold into eternal life, still worship the things our hands have made.

And if, in twenty years from now, we see on the clouds a sign that makes our hearts rise or weep, we will look at what we have made, the miracles we poured our hearts into and ignored, and know that now all our hopes are either met or destroyed. If that happens in twenty years from now, the greatest scientist, the greatest software developer, the greatest engineer, the greatest politician, will all be on their humbled knees.