The Journey Of The Magi | T.S. Elliott

This next Monday (6 January) marks the feast of Epiphany. Epiphany is a feast celebrating the 'shining forth' or revelation of God to mankind in human form, in the person of Jesus Christ. The observance had its origins in the eastern Christian church, and included the birth of Jesus Christ; the visit of the Magi (traditionally Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar) who arrived in Bethlehem; and all of Jesus' childhood events, up to his baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist. The feast was initially based on (and viewed as a fulfillment of) the Jewish Feast of Lights. This was fixed on January 6.

T.S. Elliott wore an interesting poem reflecting on the journey of the Magi to Bethlehem:

Happy New Year!

“ I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness
and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention ..."

Many of us will have heard the above words at some time in our life, written by Minnie Louise Haskins in 1908. Much later to become famous by King George VI reading it as part of his first Christmas message to the nation at the start of the Second World War.

At the start of this new, uncertain and unfathomed year, may your hand remain in the hand of God!

Pax Romana or Pax Jesus?

Some years ago now, we had a great trip through the UK. As part of our road trip we drove north to Hexam and visited the ruined remains of Emperor Hadrian’s great wall. It is quite something to stand on what is still a huge and solid stone fortification and stare East to West marvelling at how it winds on and on for countless miles protecting what was then the Roman Empire from the wild Scots hordes. My daughter had a grand time mocking her mother on her barbarian ancestry till we pointed out the obvious!

I stood for some time gazing south across England and imaging the channel and a whole continent beyond that. Back in ~120AD this was all Rome! This was an empire that spanned the known world. The legions and their families and slaves had lived in barracks on these windswept rolling hills all paid allegiance to Caesar as their Lord. Caesaris est Dóminus. 

Interestingly, about a hundred years before the wall was built, Jesus was born and Augustus Octavian had been emperor for a quarter of a century. He was King of kings – A gift from the gods! He ruled from Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from Britain to the Black Sea. He had done what no one had done for two hundred years before him: he had brought peace to the wider, Roman world – Pax Romana.

Christmas | Michael Leunig

 

4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT | MARY

Traditionally, the 4th Sunday of Advent is Mary Sunday. It is also called Rose Sunday, not only because Mary is associated with roses, but also because the colour of the Advent candle lightens from purple to rose. 

On that day Mary’s song is sung. The Magnificat, (Luke 1:46-55) is perhaps the earliest Advent hymn. In it Mary “magnifies” what God has done and will do. Like an aria in an opera, like a soliloquy in a play, the action almost stops and her message alone is centre stage.

The fourth Sunday of Advent is also called “stir-up Sunday”, the day when Anglicans gathered to stir up the Christmas pudding, which had to sit for several weeks. It also reflects the first two words of the collect (prayer): “STIR UP, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…” 

The “stir up” theme is so appealing, because it is so easy to resort to predictable pattern of behaviour and thinking at Advent season that keep us in a comfortable but stunted state of spiritual growth.

Mary stirs things up — she is a stirrer!

The first part of the Magnificat is Mary’s joy and praise of God and God’s action in her life:

“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord: my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour…”

But it’s not the first part of the Magnificat that has caused it to be banned in several modern countries. It’s the second part:

      “He has scattered the proud in their conceit

       He has cast down the mighty from their thrones

       And has lifted up the lowly.

       He has filled the hungry with good things,

       And the rich he has sent away empty..."

During the British rule of India, the government prohibited the Magnificat from being publicly recited in churches. In the 1980’s, Guatemala’s government decided that Mary’s words about God’s preferential love for the poor were dangerous and revolutionary, in fact were stirring up the country’s impoverished masses, inspiring them to believe that change was possible. 

In 1983, the military junta of Argentina outlawed any pubic display of Mary’s song after the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo placed the Magnificat’s words on posters throughout the city – the same mothers whose children all had disappeared during the blood-soaked days of the Dirty War. In the 1930’s, Mary’s song was banned in Mexico and in Franco’s Spain.

Before being executed by the Nazis in 1933, the German Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this: “The song of Mary is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings. This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” 

Once stirred up, the picture of Mary is far different than it seems first.

The Advent journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem from Nazareth, was probably part of a caravan for safety, walking 112 kilometres miles through rough and dangerous terrain. Mary with a full-term pregnancy may not have had a donkey for her to ride.

The Smithsonian website says: “Some 20 years before the birth of Jesus, King Herod, the Roman-appointed governor of Judea, built a huge palace for himself near Bethlehem. The ruins still exist. It sits atop a slave-made mountain some seven stories, high. It became known as the Herodium and was the largest palatial complex in the Roman world. It is still accessible from any point in Bethlehem and was about three miles across the flat desert from the supposed site of the birthplace of Jesus.”

Mary and Joseph certainly were aware of this imposing structure as they entered Bethlehem. On a clear night, perhaps they could look up and see the light from the torches atop the hill. They would have seen the wealth and arrogance of the aristocracy looming over the poor peasants in the Bethlehem hamlet.

And Jesus Will be Born

Christ Child by Mike Chapman | Outside St Martins-in-the-Fields

This poem was taken from the December 2014 letter by British author Adrian Plass.It can be found in full on his website.

".... Crucially, there always was, always is, always will be Jesus, not just at Christmas time, but at every time and in every place where shadows threaten and sadness falls like a cloak, and failure seems inevitable. Over and over again, from now until the end of time, Jesus will be born...."

On Christmas day, the world will turn again towards its end

But Jesus will be born

A woman who has tried once more in vain to re-create the morning

Will find her spirit crushed at last by failures and defeats

Her grief will trail like tattered ribbons

Through apocalyptic streets

And Jesus will be born

A little child who cannot waste his tiny reservoir of moisture

On a thing as purely pointless as a tear

Will puzzle at the burning skies

Blank and empty as his mother's eyes

And wish beyond the point of fear

That darkness would descend

And Jesus will be born

And in some cold, sad cell a man will dream of blessed ordinariness

A walk, a meal, a smile, a book, the chance to feel

A trusting hand in his

Small and soft and folded like a flower in the night

Devastating innocence that promises redemption and has never lied

But will not save him from the morning and the hour

When heavy boots come marching down the corridor outside

And Jesus will be born

And in a hollow church a hollow priest

Dry and dusty as some jeweled chalice locked away for safety and for ever

Will sit and sigh and gather oddments, scraps of truth

Remnants of an old, forgotten dream

Ideas and words like autumn leaves made brittle by a year of death

And by the scorching summer sun

And feel once more so glad, and oh, so very, very sad

That those who delicately brush his sprinkled fragments from their Sunday-best

Will never hear the distant, panic-stricken scream

And Jesus will be born

At the corner of the street the image of the living God

Will hug herself against the cold

And smoke a friendly cigarette

And be prepared to greet success with weary resignation

Feebly lit by one of yesterday's recycled smiles

And struggle to forget what she was told

When someone was in charge and choices could be made

And there was hope

And Jesus will be born

Jesus will be born, yes he will

Though the night enfolds like a black shroud

And the liar's lies drive us from our peace

And take us from our beds

And bring us to our knees

On the cold stone tiles of the kitchen floor

Jesus will be born, yes he will

Yes, though the skies crack

And the heavens sway

And the heat dies in the earth's core

And the last stitch in the last ditch appears

When all is lost

A child's hand will reach out from the manger

A wounded hand will catch our tears and hold them safe

For Jesus will be born for evermore on Christmas day