Massacre of the Innocents: Christmas letter from Kim Fabricius

Kim sent out this Christmas letter and I asked if we could post it here:

Christmas is, for me, a haunted house. The tree is enchanting, the ritual of gift-exchange delightful, the food cornucopian, the egg nog ambrosial – but the ghost of Herod is always crashing the party, the memory of the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16) ever souring my sweet dreams of peace. There is nothing so dead in all the world as murdered children.

The theologically feral novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago ensures that the spectre and the recollection persist. In a psychologically probing retelling of the Nativity narrative, Joseph overhears a conversation between two soldiers that alerts him to Herod’s diabolical plans and propels him to rescue his wife and child. In the aftermath, however, Joseph is plagued by the thought that he could have and should have warned other parents of the impending slaughter, and for the rest of his short life the father of Jesus will have nightmares that he is leading soldiers to kill his son.

This year’s Christmas painting then: Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Massacre of the Innocents.

Multiply narrated and theatrically staged – replete with marauding soldiers, protective fathers, distraught mothers, and solicitous villagers (and terrific touches like the soldier in the left background, opposite the cohort, pissing against a house) – the painting is particularly contemporary for being, in fact, a bowdlerisation. For scientific examination demonstrates that the original was much more explicit and detailed in its portrayal of the atrocity, re-contextualised by Bruegel as a 16th-century Flemish war crime executed by Spanish soldiers and German mercenaries. All too close to the bone for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, who ordered his royal artisans to give such “fake news” a paint-over, airbrushing and altering the mass infanticide into a scene of more quotidian pillage.

Plus ça change, right? But hush, children, what’s that sound? Do you hear it? The Shaker of Nations confounding the nabobs of nihilism in Mary’s feisty protest song:

He bared his arm and showed his strength,
     scattered the bluffing braggarts.
He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
     pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
     The callous rich were left out in the cold.
(Luke 1:51-53, The Message)

A Christmas toast, then, to the exorcism of Herod’s ghost, and – it’s the 5th anniversary of the Massacre at Sandy Hook – a New Year hope for the end of Moloch worship and the downfall of his high priests Smith & Wesson.

As for Joseph’s guilt, however – let alone for Rachel’s grief (Matthew 2:17-18) – no false consolation. Rather collective remorse and mourning, and the perennial prayer of the desperate soul: “Lord, have mercy! Come, Lord Jesus, come!”

God bless you in the Child.

Advent ambiguity

It’s all a bit vague. Advent I mean. All this waiting … and waiting … and waiting. We know who we’re waiting for because he’s already been here. In fact, as Beckett said of Godot (alluding to Matthew 25:31ff.?), we may not know it, but he’s here now: he “is my neighbour in the cell next to mine.” Still, yes, even as the one who is coming is here, so the one who is here is still coming. But notwithstanding the asinine prognostications and genre-illiterate apocalyptic readings of the witless and deranged, though we know the who, and also the why – to “make all things new” (Revelation 21:5) – we don’t know the when, where, or how.

The same uncertainty goes for the four traditional themes of Advent – TRIGGER WARNING – death, judgement, heaven and hell.

No one knows the when, where, or how of the arrival of the Grim Reaper – though we do know that he will be infinitely more attractive than those who, in their ishoo-laden cosmetic attempts to delay the date, are only ensuring that they look more like a gargoyle than he does when he comes to collect them.

And judgement? Only someone who goes “Ee ore” would presume to know whether he will be going “Baaa” or “Meh heh” when the barnyard is finally sorted. We do know the criterion of judgement (Matthew 25:31ff. again), namely, whether we’ve been kind and compassionate bipedal beasts, but we know too that it will be a time of big surprises. Someone whose self-image is ovine might find himself a lamb chop.

Which brings me to heaven and hell. All we know about heaven is that the Cubs will be winning the World Series there, so if you’re from the South Side of Chicago you’ll know at once that you’re in the Other Place. Or not. Hell, after all, is a disputed doctrine. Were it not for the Yankees, I myself would be a universalist. And were I an annihilationist, I’d be drawing my imagery from the infinite void of cricket. Still, you never know. Or maybe you do. More’s the pity.

Yes, it’s all rather vague. Which, I suspect, is the point. The point of Advent I mean. Faith isn’t certainty. Faith doesn’t have all the answers. Faith requires what Keats called negative capability, being “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Faith can say, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” Faith can even say “I was wrong” or “I’ve changed my mind.” Faith can embrace plurality and welcome the contested. “Clear” and “distinct” ideas and epistemological closure – that’s Cartesianism, not Christianity.

Shucks, I’m not even sure that I have faith. But then who cares, for who am I to say? It’s the faith of the one who is coming to meet us that saves (yeah, I’m a subjective genitive kind of guy). He is my Christmas carol, cake and cracker. How will I recognise him? Like Roy Rogers – TRIGGER WARNING – he’ll be riding a palomino (Revelation 19:11ff.). Or maybe not.

So here’s to Advent ambiguity. Yaki dah!

A Christmas carol about St Nicholas, the Arians, and the Nicene Creed

St. Nicholas bringing gifts © Elisabeth Ivanovsky

On Facebook the other day, Derek Rishmawy said he wished there were more Christmas carols about St Nicholas' defence of the Nicene faith. The Santa Claus songs are excellent in their own way, but they don't always go as deeply as they could into the problems of 4th-century trinitarian theology. So, as an early Christmas present to Derek, I wrote this carol about St Nicholas, the Arians, and the Nicene Creed.

Possible titles: "Santa Ain't an Arian", or "Put Some of That Old Time Trinitarian Theology in Your Stocking", or "All I Want for Christmas Is the Faith of Saint Nick," or, perhaps best of all (suggested by David Koyzis), "Ho-ho-homoousios". Whatever you call it, just be sure to sing it nice and jolly, accompanied by sleigh bells.

To the tune of Jingle Bells

Chorus:
Nicholas, you’re the best,
Nicky all the way!
Defender of the Nicene ὁμοούσιον Πατρί – hey!
Nicholas, you’re the best,
Nicky all the way!
Defender of the Nicene ὁμοούσιον Πατρί.

“There was when he was not,”
said Arius & Co.
It seems they had forgot
that God has come below:
born in Bethlehem,
crucified and raised,
not a creature but the One
whom angels hymn with praise – oh!

Chorus

By the candlelight
Share some Christmas cheer!
Give someone a gift!
Drink another beer!
For our light has come
And burned away our dross.
God in flesh: O come let us
Adore φῶς ἐκ φωτός – oh!

Chorus

Heresy is dull,
a bland philosophy,
it steals away the gifts
beneath the Christmas tree.
The holy catholic church
Bids all our joys increase,
So get beneath the mistletoe
And give the kiss of peace – oh!

Chorus

Every girl and boy,
And all the grown-ups too,
Let your hearts be glad,
Let Christ be born in you.
Sinners, don’t despair,
There’s no need to be blue,
Lift your hearts up to the Son,
he’s θεὸν ἐκ θεοῦ – hey!

Chorus.

Stained glass for cows: Christmas reflections

1

In the beautiful Polish film Ida, Wanda tells her niece Anna about a woman she used to know: “She was an artistic type, always making things out of bits of cloth or glass. She once made a stained glass window and put it in the barn, to make the cows happy.” For some reason – I suppose it was the cows and the barn – this reminded me of the Christmas story. There is something a bit over the top about Christmas. All those prophecies, all those miracles and wonders, all those singing angels. There’s something extravagant, even superfluous, about the whole thing. It’s so superfluous that two of the evangelists took it for granted that they could tell the whole Gospel of Jesus without so much as mentioning the Christmas story. Do we need Christmas? Yes, I suppose so, in the same way that a barn needs a window.

2

One of my children asked me why we give gifts to each other at Christmas. It is Jesus’ birthday, after all, so shouldn’t all the gifts go to him? We puzzled over this for a bit. We noticed that gifts are given not only on birthdays but also on weddings, anniversaries, the announcement of a pregnancy, and other occasions when the heart is big with joy. We might also give gifts when someone dies or gets sick or when a friend moves away. We use gifts on such occasions because there’s no other way of adequately expressing what the heart feels. We exchange gifts when an exchange of words would not be enough to say what we really mean. Gifts are a release valve for the human spirit. The special thing about Christmas isn’t just the use of gifts – that happens on all special days – but the profligate scale of gift-giving. On nearly every other occasion, the gifts are received by one individual. But the joy of Christmas is so high and so deep that we can only express what it means by giving gifts in every direction. Even if we could bring our gifts directly to the baby Jesus, our hearts would still require a release valve: the joy would be too much for us. On our way home from visiting the baby in the manger we would find ourselves shaking hands with strangers in the street, passing gifts to one another, emptying our purse into the hands of a beggar and telling him to be of good cheer. Why do we give gifts at Christmas? Not because the baby Jesus needs our gifts but because we do: we need to give something to someone: otherwise our hearts would burst.

3

I’ve been thinking about all this as I prepare my talk on the atonement for the Los Angeles Theology Conference next month. Atonement is an important idea. It’s about trying to figure out exactly how Jesus saves. Having some clarity about this can help you to talk intelligibly about how the Gospel story relates to the lives of real people here and now. Anselm’s account of the atonement is one of the most powerful pieces of apologetics in Christian history. Anselm translates the whole Gospel story into an idiom of feudal honour. To his contemporaries it must have seemed as fresh and as compelling as if someone today were to explain the significance of Jesus’ death using the language of smart phones and social media. The concept of atonement serves a purpose. But it only goes so far. Explaining the mechanism by which Jesus saves might provide an accessible point of entry into the Gospel story. It might tell you why a barn needs a window. It might even tell you why the window had to be located at that particular spot. But it can’t explain why the window is made of such strange and lovely stained glass. It can’t explain the superfluous.

4

In a fourth-century sermon on Paul’s language of “abounding grace” (Romans 5:12-21), John Chrysostom describes the need for salvation as one small piece of a bigger picture. The main thing about grace isn’t that it meets your needs but that it totally surpasses them. What Christ brings into the world is much more than anybody needs. It’s stained glass for cows.

“Paul did not say ‘grace’ but ‘abounding grace’. For from that grace we received not only as much as was required for removing that sin, but much more. For surely we were both freed from punishment and we rid ourselves of all evil; we were born again from above; and when ‘the old man’ was buried, we rose again. We were redeemed and sanctified; we were brought into adoption and justification. We became brothers and sisters of the Only Begotten, his joint heirs, and of one body with him. Indeed, we were counted as his flesh and were joined to him as a body to its head. Not only did we receive a medication that would heal the wound inflicted by sin, but also one that would bring us health, beauty, honour, glory, and dignities far surpassing our nature. Each one of these was enough to destroy death. But when all of them run together as one, not even a trace of death is left, nor can even a shadow of it remain to be seen. For Christ paid off much more than we owed – as much more as a limitless ocean compared to a small drop of water.” (Homilies on Romans, Vol. 1, p. 186)

5

What are you waiting for? Don’t just stand there! Go out and kiss somebody! Throw a party! Make a feast! Sing a Christmas carol! Let the wine flow freely! Give somebody something and receive a gift from someone too! Don’t be shy! Christ is born and the angels are singing. Christ is born and the world is renewed. Christ is born and the sunlight we were longing for has flooded over us, filling our barn (we don’t know why) with colours.

A Christmas carol

Merry Christmas, and thanks for reading my ramblings at F&T this year! Here's a Christmas carol I wrote during this morning's sermon:

Though our lives have fallen down
And though our hearts are sad,
A child is born in Bethlehem
And he will make us glad.

Though the angry nations rage
In wars that never cease,
A little child in Bethlehem
Is called the prince of peace.

Though we're born to slavery
And though injustice reigns,
A baby born in Bethlehem
Will take away our chains.

Though we poison all the seas
And though the earth is scarred,
A little boy in Bethlehem
Will mend what we have marred.

Though we'd lost a paradise
Which nothing could restore,
Our God is born in Bethlehem
And him our hearts adore.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! (a hymn by Kim)

by Kim Fabricius

(Tune: Sussex / Laus Deo)

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!
God’s in heaven, all is well!
No, he’s not, and all’s not well here:
“God’s on earth, but earth is hell.”

Jolly families in December,
round the telly, watching Morse –
that’s the image, but remember:
child abuse and bleak divorce.

Roof extension, central heating,
double glazing, sofa bed;
while the homeless, in the sleeting,
search for doorway, box, or shed.

British blood and UK passport,
porridge, Guinness, cawl, and tea –
this is our land, for our own sort:
no room for the refugee.

Bonus for the city slicker,
cuts in care for sick and old,
politicians strut and snicker:
same old story, newly told.

Tyrants – they will not enslave us;
terror – we will not condone;
but our formless fears deprave us:
now we hunt and kill with drones.

Jesus, we have come to greet you,
star-crossed child of midnight birth;
now we go to tell or tweet you:
“Earth is hell, but God’s on earth!”

Christmas with Rachel

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

It’s been a wonderful year for babies born to the daughters of people we know. Working backwards, in July to a girl we know very well indeed – her name is Katie – she’s my daughter – she gave birth to a girl named Scarlett. Angie and I – grandparents finally. I can’t tell you how much I can’t wait to begin undermining everything her parents tell (though from the single-mindedness she is already demonstrating daily, I suspect I will be surplus to requirements). Then in April, a boy named Mason was born to Lisa Gammon. And back in February, Carla, née Cavali, the daughter of two close friends of ours, had a little girl, Sophia Marie. But there was an even earlier arrival this year, earlier in February: Rachel Hamlyn, née Beynon – yes, our organist’s daughter – she gave birth to James, who was baptised here exactly two weeks ago.

But it’s not that Rachel I want to talk about this morning. The children of Katie and Lisa and Carla and Rachel, I am quite sure, will grow up surrounded by a tonne of TLC, and there is every hope that they will blossom and flourish. But of the children of another Rachel, and mothers like her, we can have no such hope. For this Rachel there is only a grief that refuses all consolation. As St Matthew records it, quoting the words of the prophet Jeremiah: 

A sound was heard in Ramah,

weeping and much lament. 

Rachel weeping for her children,

Rachel refusing all solace, 

Her children gone, dead and buried.

(Matthew 2:18, The Message)

We first hear of this Rachel in Genesis 29, when Jacob meets her by a well where she is watering a flock of her father Laban’s sheep (vv. 16-20). She is stunning. Boy meets girl at well, it’s love at first sight, and after courtship and marriage they will live happily ever after – it’s a venerable folktale, and we wait for the story to develop in the ensuing narrative. But it is not to be. Jacob works for seven years for Laban to get the girl of his dreams, but on their wedding night, under cover of darkness, Laban slips Rachel’s older sister Leah into the nuptial bed. Leah is veiled, and it is not until morning that Jacob recognises the deception. He confronts Laban, who re-promises Rachel to him, on condition that he works another seven years on his father-in-law’s farm. Done – such is Jacob’s passion for Rachel.

But the newlyweds’ problems are just beginning. They try and try, but Rachel, unlike Leah, is unable to bear children. “If I do not have children I will die!” Rachel cries. God finally hears her cry, and eventually she conceives and bears a son, Joseph, her husband’s favourite child, who will become the link between the origins of Israel in Canaan and the liberation of Israel from Egypt (not to mention becoming a West End stage star with an “amazing Technicolor dreamcoat”!). Rachel will go on to have another son, but this birth will not be the subject of a musical: Rachel dies in labour. With her last breath she names her boy Benoni, “son of my sorrow”, which Jacob changes to the more hopeful Benjamin, “son who will be fortunate”. Jacob then buries his beloved and sets a pillar by her tomb, which, the Bible says, “is there to this day” (Genesis 35:20). And Genesis makes a further observation, more than salient to the Christmas season: the tomb is “beside the road to Ephrath, now known as Bethlehem” (Genesis 35:19).

But Rachel’s role in the Hebrew Scriptures does not end in Genesis. There is another Old Testament reference to her, the one Matthew cites from Jeremiah. Here again Rachel is a figure of pain, but not the pain of death in childbirth. In Jeremiah, Rachel symbolises another kind of suffering, the suffering of injustice, the suffering of those who lose their freedom at the hands of violent power. When Babylon conquered Israel, Israel’s leaders and intelligentsia – the people most likely to cause trouble – were taken into exile. The captives were paraded along the highway that led past Rachel’s tomb. It was a road of humiliation and sorrow. Jeremiah has just prophesied Israel’s ultimate return home from Babylon, replete with anticipated scenes of singing and dancing, rejoicing and rebuilding. “I will turn their sorrow into gladness!” says the Lord. But then, in the next verse but one, the Lord says, “A sound is heard in Ramah” (Jeremiah 31:15) – that sound, the sound of inconsolable weeping and grief.

Finally, biblically, we hear that sound a third and conclusive time, Matthew’s recapitulation of Jeremiah’s lament, yet again near a town called Bethlehem, in yet another time of tears and trauma. “Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction of Christmas than the death of these children [at the hands of Herod]. Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants” (Stanley Hauerwas). In Genesis, Rachel is an icon of the suffering of childbirth. In Jeremiah, Rachel is an icon of the mother of victims of oppression. Here in Matthew, Rachel combines both traditions. How grim can grief get?

But hang on. Is that it? Is there no hope? There must be, surely. Surely there is a future. Look at Benjamin: he will have ten sons, and generations hence from his line will spring the apostle Paul. Look at Rachel’s post-exilic children – they will indeed finally return home. And look at the one Herod was after, the one who evades his mass murder, Jesus of Nazareth himself. Yes, that is true. “There is hope for your future,” as the Lord says to Rachel (Jeremiah 31:17).

Yes, that is true. But it is not true as repression and cover-up. It is not true if it means that the desolate can simply forget their heartbroken past. It is not true if it suggests that immense loss does not irretrievably determine one’s very identity – it does. For the wretched of the earth, everything becomes a potential reminder of the eye that will never be dried, and the tear that will never be mended. Sorrows that were once the potholes of life now become the main road – the one that winds its inexorable way past Rachel’s tomb, bang into a stable in Bethlehem. Thus Martin Luther rightly saw in Rachel’s story a link between the Nativity and Good Friday.

Rachel refused to be consoled – and God blessed her in her refusal. God promised Rachel hope – but not a hope on which she might count on the basis of reason or resourcefulness, experience or expectation. That would be a false hope. True hope is always hope against hope, inexplicable, unjustifiable, and unsecurable. True hope is always but a razor’s edge from despair, because it cannot and will not close its eyes to the anguish, or shut its ears to the screams, that constitute the sordid story of the world – the murdered children, the massacred victims, the millions of tortured and disappeared. No, as the poet Emily Dickinson understood: “To relieve the irreparable degrades it.” Even Christ does not relieve the irreparable. Our Lord’s identity too is irretrievably bound to his wounds. His resurrection does not remove them. His scars mark him eternally. How should it not be so with all God’s children? 

The crib and the cross of Jesus are our hope – Rachel’s hope, the mothers of the infants of Bethlehem’s hope, the hope of the mothers of the twenty children murdered at Sandy Hook School – the hope of the mother of the murderer too – and the hope of the mothers, always and everywhere, of slain or suffering children. But the hope of the crib and the cross does not mean that the victims are any less dead, or their parents and families any less grief-stricken. We betray the Christian hope if we lie about the world of death and grief, for it is precisely this world that the born, crucified, and risen One has redeemed and is redeeming – this slaughter-bench of a world that he redeems. And for his followers that means that we do not live in denial of the one, even as we do live in affirmation of the other, and that we both accept that we do not know what the future holds – it is beyond our control – and insist that we do know who holds it. And it also means that we live in opposition and resistance to all that would demean and destroy any of the creation that God once pronounced good, and stand protectively but peacefully beside Rachel and her children. It means we cry, “Lord, have mercy!” – and then take responsibility. 

“Seeing ourselves honestly, seeing the world differently. That’s where faith begins,” as Rowan Williams put it on Wednesday. Thus may we go into to the New Year with two echoes resounding: the cry of those who will not be consoled, and the voice of Jesus who, on the precipice of despair, which is yet the brink of glory, says, “Fear not, take up your cross, and follow me.”

O boy, it’s Christmas

And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God observed them closely, these lovely creatures he had made, his masterwork, his image-bearers. God watched them reasoning and deliberating, laughing and weeping, falling asleep and falling in love, writing stories, building cities, inventing religions, feasting and drinking, making laws and making music and making love – and God loved it, loved all of it down to the last toenail and the last pubic hair.

And God said, Behold, let us go down among them and unite ourselves to them. Let us become like them in every way, just as they are in every way like us. For God wanted to show these image-bearers how closely they resembled him, how easily he could put them on like a familiar suit of clothes (and never take them off again: for so God loved them). Let us become bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh (said God), to show that human flesh and bone are not far from us but are our likeness, a perfect perambulating replica of our joy.

But what sort of human being should God become? That was a tough one. God inspected all the different stations and species of human life, trying each one affectionately, scrupulously, the way a person tries on many pairs of shoes to find the perfect fit.

Butchers and bakers and candlestick makers,

graphic designers and stolid bricklayers,

doctors and lawyers and unemployed surfers,

earnest young men and old women in burqas –

God saw them all and loved them. Each one of them was suitable. Any one of them would do fine. But somehow it was still not – quite – the thing God had in mind. God scratched his head, or would have, if God had had a head.

And then God spied them. A glorious little huddle of them. They were squatting in the dirt with dirty limbs and dirty faces, faces rapt as they hunted about for bugs, dug for worms, farted and belched and made agreeable little grunting noises. God watched them a long time, scrutinised them, sized them up and studied them from every angle, and God was very pleased, for this was just the thing. Yes, this would fit like a glove.

And so it was that grace was added to nature, creation was sanctified, the whirling worlds redeemed, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well and all that jazz. For it was on that day that God, the Lord, the master of the universe, became – a boy.


Merry Christmas.

Yes, it is true: sermon for Advent 4

by Kim Fabricius

Each year we hear again the ancient Christmas narrative. Each year we retell the story of how, almost unnoticed, God snuck into the world of Augustus and Herod, the “the movers and shakers”, to re-make history from below. We are astonished, touched, tickled, by our humble God’s predilection not for nabobs but for nobodies, for oddballs and outliers, for those whom the system chews up and spits out, the poor, the sick, the sad, the bad, the old. Something unimaginable and unpredictable happened, something original and fresh was revealed. God in his kindness decided to break the silence of centuries by giving himself away in the Word-made-fragile-flesh, whose first utterance was the hungry cry of a helpless new-born, whose last would be the desperate howl of a crucified misfit.

The mysterious Advent of God was focussed in a child; the breadth and depth of God’s love was expressed in a mite in a manger. God chose to visit the world not in Whitehall or Wall Street but in weakness, through an ordinary birthing by a peasant teenager in troubled times and awkward circumstances. The maker of galaxies and solar systems, mountains and rain forests, blue whales and dancing daffodils, revealed his glory in a bairn in a barn in the back of beyond.

Yes, the Christmas story we hear each year is the same, but our worlds, private and public, are always different. Joy and sorrow, success and failure, health and sickness – there are always annual alterations, good and bad, and, if we’re lucky, not cut down before time, we develop, decline, and die. But no matter what changes we negotiate, what achievements we celebrate, what losses we mourn, what tragedies overwhelm us, the Christmas story speaks to us again of The New – new birth, new life, new purpose. It tells us that things can and will be different, that the past need not and will not determine the future, that the God who met us once in Jesus will meet us again in Jesus, that the God of surprises is working even now, with unpromising material, in hidden ways, to create a new heaven and a new earth.

Angie and I had our first grandchild in July, and in a very real sense that we all feel intuitively, viscerally, the birth of every child is a small protest against the tired, cynical view that we are condemned to live lives of the same-old same-old, locked in a system of one-damned-thing-after-another. But in the birth of this child, a new adventure of faith begins, a new way of being human is disclosed to us, a new way of relating to each other is asked of us, and a new power of living is imparted to us. The Christmas story is an old story that is forever young, a story that constitutes a radical challenge to the trivial, the odious, and the squalid, a story pregnant with the possibility of meaning, decency, and beauty. Danger is not denied, threats are acknowledged, stupidity still stalks, vanity struts, and violence strikes. Nevertheless, because in Jesus grace and truth have pitched a tent, established an outpost in the world – indeed a colony: the church – the glorious advent of the peaceable kingdom is no longer in doubt. So as followers of the Wee One we can be confident and courageous, strong and tender. 

That is why we make the journey back to Bethlehem each year: to go back to the future by rediscovering our roots in this gift of God wrapped in a nappy. It is the time we relocate where we come from so as to re-orientate ourselves to where we are going. It is at once a time of homecoming and of setting out, of affirming the already and anticipating the not-yet. It is a time of deep, deep gratitude, magical joy, and indestructible hope.

In a famous Christmas poem John Betjeman asks, with deep, urgent longing:

And is it true? And is it true,

This most tremendous tale of all,

Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,

A Baby in an ox’s stall?

The Maker of the stars and sea

Become a Child on earth for me?

Yes, it is true, it is true. For me, for you, for everyone.

Marian hymn

Mary the dawn, Christ the Perfect Day;

Mary the gate, Christ the Heavenly Way!
Mary the root, Christ the Mystic Vine;
Mary the grape, Christ the Sacred Wine!
Mary the wheat, Christ the Living Bread;
Mary the stem, Christ the Rose blood-red!
Mary the font, Christ the Cleansing Flood;
Mary the cup, Christ the Saving Blood!
Mary the temple, Christ the temple’s Lord;
Mary the shrine, Christ the God adored!
Mary the beacon, Christ the Haven’s Rest;
Mary the mirror, Christ the Vision Blest!
Mary the mother, Christ the mother’s Son
By all things blest while endless ages run.
Amen.

“Mary the Dawn,” by an anonymous poet; audio recording here.

On the virgin birth: or, why it's better to say the creed than to criticise it

I got an email from someone the other day about a post I wrote (seven years ago!) where I cast aspersions on the "historical" value of the New Testament's virgin birth narratives. 

I sent a reply email, and since I felt ashamed when I read that old post, I thought I'd reproduce my reply here:

Barth's famous discussion of the virgin birth is in Church Dogmatics I/2, the section on 'The Miracle of Christmas'. Barth always insists that acts of divine revelation are 'not historical'. But he doesn't mean they never happened. All he means is that revelation is a unique event, an act of God. It's not part of the normal historical sequence, it doesn't belong to a chain of cause-and-effect, and so there's no use trying to verify or disprove it on historical grounds. 

So in the case of the virgin birth, Barth argues that it's not subject to the methods of historiography. Its truth isn't for historians to decide. But he certainly believes that it really happened, that it happened in time and space, within the real material human world. It involved Mary's body, her real flesh and blood. In this section of Church Dogmatics, Barth's brilliant critique of Brunner rests on the assumption that the virgin birth really happened. His point is just that it happens as revelation, as an act of God. 

And so we can start to get our heads around the truth of the virgin birth only by confessing it. It's not an explanation or a conclusion that you could arrive at from other premises, historical or philosophical or whatever. It's a truth grasped in the humility of faith.

Anyway, I guess I misrepresented Barth in that post: don't hold it against me, it was so long ago! And I definitely misrepresented the Christian faith if I gave the impression that something can have theological meaning without actually happening! As though the creed were a conjuring trick, a magical formula rather than a confession about reality, about how things really are in this world. 

For what it's worth, nowadays I would never speak that way about the virgin birth. Who do I take myself for? Am I really so much smarter than St Matthew and St Luke? Am I qualified to correct the church's creed, the sum of the gospel, just because I've read two or three books on the topic? Would my own personalised ready-made faith – in which everything is arranged just as I like it, and everything difficult or offensive is removed – really be an improvement on the faith of the church? Wouldn't I be like the proud young carpenter who, on his first day on the job, scorns the silly traditions of other carpenters and gets to work building his own three-legged table – only to discover that the rest of the world knew what they were doing when they made them with four legs?

I guess all I'm trying to say is that I used to be a lot more cynical and sophisticated than I am today. As one of the saints has said, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." Nowadays, to be honest, I'm just very grateful to be a Christian at all. Three-legged tables are fine, as far as they go. But you can rely implicitly on the ones with four legs; that's the kind you want when you're sitting down in the comfort of your own home, day after day, a table just like the one your grandfather used, and just like the one your great-grandchildren will use too, long after you've left the world and gone to that big dinner table in the sky.

It's a good thing to be a Christian – I'm sorry to be so banal, but that's what really strikes me. It's a good thing to believe something that you didn't invent for yourself. It's a good thing to have a certain framework, a story that tells you what kind of place the world really is, so that there are some basic questions that are already settled, that you don't have to go on wringing your hands and wondering about. It's a privilege, a real privilege, to be able to join your voice to the church's confession: "... and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate" – and all the rest. 

If you ask me, a faith like that is as good as Christmas: as reliable as the calendar, but full of surprises too.

Thirty: a Christmas sermon

A Christmas sermon by Kim Fabricius

This is my 30th Christmas at Bethel. (I know: given my youthful good-looks, it’s hard to believe…)  In preparation, I’ve been looking at my previous 29 sermons.

On my first Christmas (which some of you will remember … Yeah, right!), I focussed on two specifics of the message of the angels to the shepherds, highlighting the personal and the now: “To you … this day …” I named names – Ernie, Gareth, Pat, …, and said, today, December 25th 1982, the good news strikes again: “A Saviour is born!  Your Saviour is born!!”  Very in-your-face.

A year later I did a Patrick Moore (today it would be BBC pin-up Professor Brian Cox) and took you star-gazing.  “Lift your heads!” I said.  “There’s another world out there that has flashed into our world like the star the wise men saw and followed, leaving their familiar ecology, recklessly risking everything in their passionate hunt for the holy, for the real, (in T. S. Eliot’s words) “no longer at ease here in the old dispensation.”  Will you raise your gaze from the flatlands of 24/7 and follow that star on a journey of faith into the New Year?  Very get-up-and-go.

Then, in 1984, I deployed a visual aid.  I borrowed a shopping trolley from the International (which became Spar, which has become Sainsbury’s) and strolled up and down the aisle filling it with the presents you brought to the service.  So full, in fact, that they covered the child’s seat – which was precisely my point: in all the clutter of our lives, no room for the child.  But – more – God is a God who “makes room” – that’s what the Hebrew word for “salvation” literally means – “roominess”.  “So make room for the Christ-child!” I exclaimed, as I cleared the seat in the trolley.  What a clever-clogs I thought I was!

In 1985, it was the occasion for a word-play.  Huge letters Blu-Tacked to the backs of chairs set up at the front: “GOD IS NOWHERE”.  Such, I said, is the claim of atheism.  But if you take the word “NOWHERE” – and I took the word “NOWHERE” – and break it after the “W” – and I broke it after the “W” – well, presto!: “GOD IS NOWHERE” becomes “GOD IS NOW HERE”, the Christmas claim.  Neat, huh?

In 1986, I got scholarly.  Mary, according to Luke 2:19, “remembered”, or “treasured”, all the things the shepherds had told her.  But the original Greek actually means “kept them in good condition”.  Our toys will break, our jumpers will wear, or jewellery will tarnish, but, I said, God will always keep Jesus as good as new.  So getting up for Greek class at 8:30 in Oxford, I thought, was worth it after all!

That’s my first 5 years here.  Only 25 to go…  Okay, I know, at this rate it will be Boxing Day before I finish!  So suffice it to say that, in subsequent years, among other things …

I’ve used a Christmas card showing Santa in Australia riding Rudolf the red-nosed wallaby, to contextualise the good news, to earth it wherever you happen to live.

I’ve done a reflection on “Christmas is dynamite”, Jesus as “an explosion of humanity”: handle this kid in the cot with care, for he will grow up to be the man from Nazareth who lives very dangerously – and he will call us to follow.

I’ve told you about the 4½ foot-high door in the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, and said that we have to become very small, like a child, if we want to enter the kingdom of God.

I’ve done a meditation on Jesus the “disarming” child who couldn’t care less about our nationality or sexuality or theological correctness, who “reaches out, unquestioningly, to your elemental humanity, desiring only your tenderness, moist like cattle breath, warm like straw.”

I’ve exploited Harry Potter mania, suggesting that J. K. Rowling is quite heavily reliant on the story of Jesus for her magical epic drama – which isn’t nearly as good as the original.

I’ve made up a meeting of the IMF – that’s the Incarnational Management Forum – imagining what such a focus group might come up with for Christmas – and, of course, getting it all wrong by turning Christmas into a summit meeting of the world’s power brokers.  You can imagine the mess!

I’ve done a send-up on “Round Robin” Christmas letters, imagining what Mary might write for Hello magazine with all its razzmatazz celebrity junk: “Joseph is an amAAAzing partner, the birth was AWEsome, and three Kings gave us LOTS of bling-bling, while some shepherds sang ‘Hark! the Harrods Angels sing’.”

I’ve asked if you’re good at remembering important dates, pointed to dates we all seem to remember – great ones like the release of Nelson Mandela, terrible ones like 9/11 – but concluded that there is no day like Christmas Day for a world-changing event – apart, of course, from the Good Friday it anticipates, crib and cross cut from the same wood.

I’ve deployed Dr Seuss’ classic tale How the Grinch Stole Christmas? to advance the claim that, in fact, Christmas is un-nickable, that we are safe and secure in Christ, the one who never treated others as rivals, never acted in self-protection, lived a life of dispossession, not accumulation.  If you can’t buy or sell love, you certainly can’t steal it.

I’ve shocked some people by proposing that, given the rather odd, indeed preposterous way the Christmas story unfolds, what with weird Babylonian astrologers, and shepherds who hear music in the sky, and a stable of a maternity ward – I proposed that, by the world’s standards, frankly, God is an idiot.

Finally, last year – “Land the plane!” I can hear Angie thinking! – I mocked the fashionable obsession with technology in worship, insisting that Christmas is God’s “Powerless Point Presentation”, God’s coming in the weakness and vulnerability of a neonate to counter and critique the world’s wowing us with the state-of-the-art.

So 29 years of annually looking for a different angle, a new gimmick, a catchy phrase to preach the Good News of Christmas.  But really – as if the Christmas story needs a re-write!  As if the Christmas message needs spin!  As if I could re-market the meaning of Christmas, “new and improved”!  O Kim, Kim, Kim – what a jerk!!

Listen!  A simple story that unlocks the hidden treasures of the universe, addresses the deepest desire of our hearts, and fills us with wonder and joy.  The mystery of the world turns out to be the reality of God, and the reality of God turns out to be a little human being. Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, all the great storytellers – they can all but grandly gesture to the simple story of Jesus in Luke.  So this year let not the sermon interpret the story, let the story interpret the sermon.  Yes, listen …: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus …” [Luke 2:1-20].

Christmas clerihews

by Kim Fabricius

Zech
Cries, “A child? Bloody heck!”
Famous last words he speaks –
For forty weeks.

Liz
Was in such a tizz
At her lump
That it jumped.

Gabe
said, “Hey, babe,
Just say ‘No’
No mo.”

Mary
For her first was chaste – very.
“But, please,” she pleaded, “Not ergo
Semper virgo.”

Joe
Was sooo
Gutted when he heard the news
That he tanked up on turps till he snoozed.

Emperor Augustus
Banned coitus interruptus
To make his census
Immensus.

Keepers of sheep
Were awakened from sleep
To hear seraphim singing of hope.
(It was the dope.)

Herod the Great
Was a right reprobate
Who liked bonking and butchering babies.
He got his comeuppance by dying of scabies.

The magi,
Who didn’t know Micah from Haggai,
Didn’t need the Good Book –
They just looked.

Simeon and Anna,
Eighty-odd, yelled, “Hosanna!”
“Christmas is for kids” we are told.
No! It’s for the old!

Art for advent: Banksy's crucifix

Now here's a piece of art worth pondering this Christmas – a crucifix by the British graffiti artist Banksy (h/t Stephen Downey):

Though for a slightly different perspective on the Christmas mythology, see Richard's thoughtful post on lying about Santa. And if you want to know whether Santa Claus appears in the Bible, look no further than this annotated Bible.

Christmas sermon: A PowerlessPoint Presentation

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Okay, let’s put an end to any puzzlement, though I suspect you’ve already got the point: this is my visual aid for Christmas – me! Not my usual Sunday best – the nice suit, silk tie, polished shoes, and distinguished Genevan preaching gown. No, today, you get me dressing down – you get a jumper, jeans, and a pair of trainers. Sorry it’s not PowerPoint, but I’m suspicious of any technology that uses “bullets” to preach the Prince of Peace. So you’ll have to do with me – and my thesis that Christmas itself is a PowerlessPoint presentation of God dressing down – which is the way he dresses up.

The birth of a baby is, after all, a commonplace, not a spectacular. And with Jesus himself we celebrate the birth of a human, not a superhuman. Indeed that, precisely, is the message of Christmas: God is human. And not just partly, or contingently, or temporarily human, as if somewhere behind the God we see revealed at Christmas there is a god who is not human, some kind of divine essence or absolute, or even an inhuman deity, though there are plenty of such pop idols about, like Mammon the god of the banks and the market, or Mars the god of war and terror, or Venus the goddess of health and beauty. No, the humanity of God not only expresses, it actually defines, constitutes, the very being of God all the way down and from eternity to eternity. God is not only human, there is no non-human in God.

Now that’s the point, but it’s not the whole point. God is human, but what kind of human is God? That’s where Jesus comes in. God is not only human, God is this human. God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, has a name, his name is Jesus, and Jesus is the kind of person God is, Jesus is the person God is, here as a baby born in a stable, later as a man killed on a cross. (As John Donne said, Christmas and Good Friday are morning and evening of the same day.) Which is not the way a God who is omnipotent is supposed to behave. A PowerlessPoint presentation of divine dressing down indeed! A God, you might say, with no sense of occasion. Check it out.

At his baptism Jesus shows up to be baptised by John – and John exclaims, “No way! I need to be baptised by you!” Jesus appears not as a holy big shot, no, he identifies himself with the usual suspects and sinners. No sense of occasion.

Yes, his baptism turns out to be a royal occasion: Jesus is anointed by the Holy Spirit, as the Messiah. But what’s the next thing this messiah does? Go to a royal banquet of an inaugural ceremony with the great and the good? No, he heads for the desert, to sweat and starve for forty days – and keep company with the devil. No sense of occasion.

Then Jesus returns to civilization and begins to preach. He takes a service in Nazareth, his hometown. Preaches his socks off, to a rapturous reception. Not! No, he antagonises the congregation by reminding his neighbours of Bible stories where God plays away, ministering to foreigners, even enemies, rather than to local, patriotic folk. The Cohens, the Goldbergs, and the Finkelsteins are not pleased with the lad. They run him out of town. No feeling for his audience. No sense of occasion.

Then Jesus broadens his appeal. He preaches on a hillside to a crowd. What do crowds want to hear from a messiah? Promises of wealth, strength, happiness, and national security, of course. What does Jesus tell them? Blessed are the poor, the meek, the mournful, and the nonviolent. And, in this programmatic PowerlessPoint presentation, no big screen for those at the back. No sense of occasion.

Then there are the healings. Now that’s the way to impress the punters and get the word around – perform some sensational miracles. Except that Jesus is always telling his patients to keep schtum, and refusing to perform for the professionals who come to check him out for quality control. No stage presence. No sense of occasion.

Oh, and how do messiahs succeed? Keep your friends in the loop; make strategic alliances. Instead, Jesus dumbfounds his disciples – they constantly misunderstand him and even object to his teaching – and he alienates the clergy with his confrontational style. No sense of occasion … after occasion … after occasion.

Finally, the climax of his ministry, Jesus goes to Jerusalem, the capital city. Here he will finally convince his friends and defeat his foes. So he goes to work. At the last supper he demonstrates what lordship is like. How? – like a slave he washes the disciples’ feet. And before the high priest and the Roman governor he vindicates his cause. How? – he is silent before the one and lippy before the other. No sense of occasion. This time, big time. Caiaphas, however, has a sense of occasion: he dramatically rends his garment. And Pilate has a sense of occasion: he publicly washes his hands. And the people have a sense of occasion (like Herod, they know what to do when love incarnate appears): “Kill him!” they cry. But Jesus has no sense of occasion: his idea of a grand exit is hanging from a gibbet beside a rubbish tip.

But then what else from a God whose idea of a grand entry is a Nappy Christmas (Godfrey Rust), pulled from the womb of a peasant in the palace of a stable, surrounded by an entourage of cattle and yokels, and sleeping in the four-poster bed of a feeding trough? People think they have an idea of what God is like, and they would recognise him when he appears – awesome, stunning, prodigious (a kind of cross between the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the four judges on X Factor). They don’t. They didn’t. He isn’t.

Christmas: God’s PowerlessPoint presentation, God’s dressing down, God’s self-demonstration that he has no sense of occasion, that God is God in a messy birth (and, later, in a messier death). And there, I think, is the true wonder of Christmas: the miraculous not in some supernatural phenomenon but in the striking ordinariness of the neonatal (and the finally fatal). And there also is the real hope of Christmas: things are not as they seem; and, more, things are not as they have to be, they can be altogether otherwise. Is a new world possible? Absolutely, because a new world came. And because a new world came, a new world is coming.

The Idiot: a Christmas sermon

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

Once again (for the twenty-eighth time), I have read, studied and prayed the Christmas stories so that I could preach to you this morning. Here’s the deal for 2009.

Matthew’s Gospel. Written by a Jew, it focuses on Joseph, who must do a lot of sleeping because, like his coat-of-many-colours namesake, he does a lot of dreaming. Babylonian sages follow a star to Jerusalem, and then start asking questions about a neonatal king. Now when you consider (a) that the Jews didn’t like Babylonians, their one-time conquerors, and (b) that the Jews already had a king, who wouldn’t take kindly to a rival – well, nosing around for a successor to the throne was actually a pretty dumb thing for wise guys to do. And sure enough, the hateful Herod calls for his hit men and, all swords slashing, children die and mothers weep. A shambles.

Then there is Luke’s Gospel. Written by a Gentile, and narrated with a quite orchestral elegance, it focuses on Mary, who, like Joan Baez, is a feisty singer of protest songs. Emperor Augustus takes a census – to collect taxes, to invest in weapons, to oil his war machine – while august angels put on a lightshow and do an open-air gig for peace – for yokels. Then a pious old bloke named Simeon praises the Lord – but prophesies maternal grief; and an old Temple groupie named Anna cries, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at least!” Not much youth work going on in Jerusalem, is there?

Finally, John’s Gospel. At once very Jewish and very Greek, with one heck of an overture, announcing great themes – light and darkness, life and truth, grace and glory – and focussing on the Logos, “the Word”, with tightly controlled verses rising to a crescendo: “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). Scholars love it. But “us” didn’t get it: the world didn’t get it, the Jews didn’t get it, nobody got it, really, except for a handful of the born-again. A handful? That’s it?

So I’ve read, marked, and inwardly digested the old stories, and I’ve come to a conclusion. To be honest, it’s a conclusion I reached long ago, but I’ve been reluctant to share it with you, because it’s not the kind of thing that ministers usually tell their congregations. But, hey, it’s Christmas, so let’s throw caution to the cold winds. My conclusion is this: God is an idiot. An absolute idiot. I mean of all the idiotic things – Christmas. The only thing I’ll give God is consistency. Look at the record: the Lord’s got form – he’s spent the whole of history acting like an idiot. No one in his right mind would do the things that God has done to redeem the world. Yep, God is an idiot.

Here is some homework for you. Later today (if you’re still sober), take a look at the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel, King Jimmy’s “begats”, the family tree of Jesus. I suspect you’d expect to find a “now let us praise famous men” kind of litany. Not a bit of it. There are three sections. The first section is all about people obsessed with sex. The second section is all about people who are pathologically violent. In the third section things get better – or do they? It’s hard to tell, because most of the people listed cannot be found anywhere in the Old Testament, and, to be frank, it looks like Matthew is making it up as he goes along. So meet the ancestors: fornicators, killers, and impostors. Nice one, God.

Or just take a good look at the world (though for this exercise it would help to be drunk). God made it – “in the beginning”. A “good” start. Sure, because God is all-wise, all-powerful, and all-loving. But now what have we got? The German philosopher Hegel called it a “slaughter-bench”. Was he wrong? What a mess. Thanks a lot, God. Of course clever philosophers and theologians have come up with all kinds of ingenious explanations that pass the buck to the laws of nature, or to the devil, or to sinners like you and me (three cheers for free will!), which lets God, the inscrutable old So-and-So, off the hook. I don’t buy it. He’s the creator of the universe, for heaven’s sake, and we get cancer, concentration camps – and Simon Cowell? If I were God, I promise you, I’d have made a better job of it. Wouldn’t you? What would you call the head of a construction company called Cosmos PLC, whose card says “Welcome to My World” – this world? You’d call him an idiot, that’s what you’d call him. Imagine God as a Project Manager on The Apprentice: Sir Alan Sugar points his menacing digit: “You’re fired!”

Okay, granted, God comes to fix the broken world. But how does he do it? To answer that question I would have to go on to talk about Good Friday and the crucifixion, and people will say, hey, it’s Christmas, we’re celebrating a birth, not commemorating a death, give the kids a break, give the cross a rest. Sorry, but that’s just what we can’t do. As Martin Luther saw with crystal clarity, the crib and the cross are cut from the same wood. Hence all the foreboding in Luke’s Christmas stories. Hence the shadow that falls over Matthew’s Nativity events. And the “we have seen his glory” in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel (John 1:14) – the “glory” of Jesus, for John, is, above all, the glory of – (oops) the cross! Good Friday for all three evangelists is written into Christmas Day. “Hark! The herald-angels sing” is the overture for the Passion. Mark is on the ball: in his gospel he omits the birth of Jesus altogether and pretty much cuts to the chase down the Via Dolorosa.

So here, in sum, is God’s plan for a broken world: God sends his Son, born of Mary, to fix it, and, missed by Herod, crucified by Pontius Pilate, we fix him. Love: can’t live without it, but can’t live with it either – and when we meet Love, we murder him. And to the naked eye, the world rolls on pretty much as the same old same old, as the venal reign, the greedy prosper, and the weak get shafted. And we think: Where was Plan B? No, this is not the way we would do things if we were God. God doesn’t do multi-tasking. God is a loser and failure. God is an idiot.

So how do I conclude? As ever, with the seraph, like this: “I am here with good news for you, which will bring great joy to all people. This very day in David’s town your Saviour is born – Christ the Lord!” The movers and shakers – they’re over-rated. I’ll stick with the Idiot, love the Idiot, and trust the Idiot, thanking God for making me – us – idiots too. Jesus said, “Blessed are the idiots!” Well, no, he didn’t – but he might have, because it’s true. So rejoice!

That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
(John Betjeman)

It's a Boy! A Christmas eve homily

A sermon by Kim Fabricius

It’s a boy! A tiny mite of a creature with slick black hair, swarthy face, dark brown eyes, squinting, adjusting to the light in the shock and wonder at suddenly being thrown into the back of beyond, and – what always gets you the most – those perfectly formed little fingers and toes. He’s crying. But what’s the matter? Cold? Hunger? Wind? Wet? You hug him and, by trial and error, you try to find out. He is certainly helpless but he is hardly passive, and he demands your attention, shamelessly.

Does this little one care about who you are, about your sex, sexuality, politics, or even whether you believe in God, or what God you believe in? No, he reaches out, unquestioningly, to you in your elemental humanity. He wants only your tenderness, moist like cattle breath, warm like straw.

This baby happens to be Jewish, but he is not bothered if you are Roman or Samaritan, would not be bothered if you are Palestinian, Welsh, or even American, and he will soon be visited by three pagan strangers from what is present-day Iraq. Some shepherds will also pop in to see him, but their lowly occupation and status are of no concern to him either. His mother happens to be an unmarried teenaged peasant, but it would make no difference if she’d been wed in a temple and had more silver than sense. And all the people attendant on his birth – they have their own backgrounds and social standing, and they bring to the stable their own complicated personal histories. They also, no doubt, have questions on their minds, unresolved issues in their lives, and they certainly have their share of muddles, hang-ups, self-deceptions, and sins. But he doesn’t mind. Their cuddles are all that he requires.

Soon this baby will begin to grow up. A king will try to kill him, and he will become an unwelcome asylum seeker and refugee on the run. At the age of twelve he will run away from home. He will be a constant worry to his parents. He will have radical and disturbing ideas about his identity, vocation, and destiny. He will quit the family business and hang out with an odd circle of friends. He will mix with very dubious characters, including prostitutes and terrorists, and he will get into big, big trouble. He will challenge received readings of his own scriptures and traditions. He will confront the powerful with an unyielding will, a fierce tongue, and a turn of the cheek. His family will as much as disown him, his friends will desert him, his foes will finally destroy him. But all that lies in the future. Today, like all babies, he’s an innocent and a sign of hope, and he “penetrates my deafness”, not with his message, but “with his loud crying” (Augustine).

In the more distant future he will spawn a new religion, and this religion will spread and encompass the globe. It will also divide into denominations and sects, parties and wings, with pompous leaders and petty followers, and his name will be deployed as a shibboleth to condemn and exclude, and brandished as a weapon to wage wars and crusades, quite out of keeping with the disarming child who bears it. But not today. Today the boy is neither the focus of a faith nor a justification for violence, and his name is as common as Gareth in Wales. He is just like any other infant, both nothing special and seven pounds of miracle. Today he cannot be used for anything, particularly to endorse our own agenda. Today he just lies there, wiggling.

As for me, today I bring you good news about the God disclosed in this child, who happens to be the Word made flesh, the “little Word,” as St. Bernard called him. He has no time for religious fuss, he gives no points for moral rectitude, he is oblivious to all our other divisive cultural constructions, and he would not know theological correctness if it pulled down his nappy and smacked him on the bum. All – all – are welcome at the manger. He simply wants you to come as you are and to be there with him. All very natural, because although there is another world, you will find it nowhere else but hidden in this one.

Yet if you feel moved to worship, and if you really want to bless this child’s little heart, let your praise be your deepest longings, your prayer unselfconscious attention, your hymn the simplest of lullabies, and your offering – whoever you happen to be.

Rowan Williams: Christmas with Karl Barth

Today’s Telegraph features a Christmas meditation by Rowan Williams, focusing on Karl Barth’s critique of “principle”:

“What [Barth] was warning against was the temptation of unconditional loyalty to a system, a programme, a ‘cause’ which was essentially about ‘me and people like me’…. Christmas is supremely the story of a God who is not interested in telling us about principles…. Christmas doesn’t offer an alternative set of economic theories or even a social programme. It’s a story – the record of an event that began to change the entire framework in which we think about human life, so that the unique value of every life came to be affirmed and assumed…. That’s one reason why we tell this story repeatedly, the story of the ‘unprincipled’ God who values what others don’t notice, who relates to people we’d all rather forget, whose appeal is to everyone because he has made everyone capable of loving response.”

Have yourselves a conservative Christmas!

A guest-post by Scott Stephens (originally written for an Australian newspaper)

Conservative politics is now everywhere in retreat. Or rather, it has been routed. Across the Western world, conservative parties are in disarray after suffering a catastrophic series of electoral defeats. Just think of the fate of the Liberal Party after Howard, or the Republicans after Bush, or New Labor in these final, dying gasps of the Blair-Brown regime (which has been overtly Thatcherite in its approach to economic policy).

Conservatism’s now dismal outlook is due, in large part, to the rather fickle affections of the free-market economy to which it has wedded itself. Even during the bad times, it finds itself in a position where it has to keep talking up the benefits of capitalism for fear of losing its political pedigree – that of being the best at managing the economy and generating massive surpluses.

But while political conservatism is everywhere being rolled back, many commentators and even economists find themselves looking to the likes of President-elect Obama for a different kind of conservatism: domestic or economic (in the traditional Greek sense of oikonomia, or ‘household management’) conservatism. Take Chris Patten, former Tory and now Chancellor of Oxford University, who has recently written that ‘the new president’s first task will be … to restore the real family values of saving, thrift, responsibility, and fair reward.’ Fareed Zakaria has expressed the same sentiment. ‘This crisis – dramatically, vengefully – forced the United States to confront the bad habits it has developed over the past few decades. If we can kick those habits, today’s pain will translate into gains in the long run.’

In other words, the new conservative hope is that the current credit contraction will force people to begin living within reasonable means once again, and thus will begin rectifying nearly three decades of fiscal insanity. The figures that measure the extent of our madness over this period are truly terrifying. In the United States, the ratio of private debt to income is 290%. In Australia, it is 165%. Admittedly, these ratios include people’s mortgages. But far from ameliorating these figures, it is the mortgages themselves that prove to be the problem.

One of the most notable trends over the past decade – on the back of the dramatic escalation in home equity due to the housing bubble – is people’s willingness to convert their mortgages into yet another line of credit for spending on luxury items and retail. And so, while under relatively normal economic conditions, the escalating prices of certain staples like food and fuel and clothing would cause a downturn in domestic economic growth, and thus a slowing in the retail sector, in the United States and Australia ‘consumer confidence’ and retail spending has gone through the roof!

And this brings us to perhaps the most obscene political decision made by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his first year in office. Rudd inherited a $17.3 billion budget surplus from the Howard-Costello decade, a surplus that already had been amassed by paying down public debt (and thus ignoring social infrastructure) and by converting public debt into private or household debt, which now exceeds $150 billion.

In order to bolster his credentials as an ‘economic conservative’, Rudd-Swan then presented the Australian public with $21.7 billion budget surplus for the 2008-2009 financial year – again, money that could have been invested toward the future in the form of infrastructure, schools, universities, clean energy, and research and development, or money that could even have been used to honour our commitment to the UN’s Millenium Goals!

But instead, at the first sign of a drop in consumer confidence and a slackening off of retail-mania in September, the Federal Government promised to pump $10.4 billion into the pockets of the Australian public at a time of the year when they are guaranteed to spend up big and not pay down debt. Merry Christmas, indeed!

But before you spend it up and thus deepen our present addiction to an unsustainable and self-centred way of life, try reflecting on how we got here. Think, just for a moment, about having yourselves a conservative Christmas, in which we decide that we probably have spent more than enough on tat and trinkets, on leisure and gadgets, most often to the neglect of the common good and our moral obligation to care for one another. And think about what it says about our government, that at the very time when we should begin reshaping our habits and practices, orienting them toward others and toward the future, we are given just what we need to deepen our addiction to unrestrained spending.

Wendell Berry put it beautifully when he lamented that, in the United States, ‘the most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.’

The last President to do that was Jimmy Carter, just before he was voted out of office in a landslide. His replacement? Ronald Reagan. And there began our present malaise.

Tom Waits: Silent Night

Here’s some nice music for Advent: a rare recording of Tom Waits singing “Silent Night.” Click here to listen online.