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)