Humbug! ... ?

Just when you thought trimmings, tinsel and turkey had gone away for another year, this piece drags out that Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.  Often at Christmas time I look again at this book, reflecting like Scrooge on my own past Christmases.   It’s also time – as I touched on in my last post here - to peruse some notes I’d collected a few years ago on the original significance of some of our seasonal traditions. 

It’s a chance to consider what Christmas is and what it is not; and also – least we cast out baby with bathwater – what it “isn’t not”.  In pre-Christian times most cultures had a mid-winter festival, to brighten up the darkest season of the year and to look forward to the return of light, warmth and growth.  Some of the familiar trappings of Christmas are rooted in these festivals.  We might prefer to cast aside these superstitions as examples of what the Advent collect calls the ‘works of darkness’, but we can’t deny the truth of God’s love for us from one year to the next, from time immemorial.  Whether we continue to grow food for ourselves in gardens or allotments, or rely on commerce and the supermarket shelves, it’s important to remember that provision for our practical needs is just as much part of God’s love for us as His provision for our redemption from the effects of sin through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My original outline for this article included an allusion to the Roman god Janus, after whom January is named; he had two faces, one to look forward and one to look back.  Then I heard a talk in which came the idea of seeing the past as a foundation for the future.  So now I feel doubly justified in summarising all this reflection of things historical with a forward-looking exhortation.

Lent will all too soon be upon us; it’s the Church’s second – and most prominent – penitential season.  If you can bear it, I suggest that, before Lent begins, we consider one little detail of A Christmas Carol.  Before he met any of the ghosts, Scrooge was approached by a gentleman raising money ‘to make some slight provision for the poor and destitute’.  Scrooge’s response was to argue for the work of prisons, workhouses and the treadmill.  He was confronted by the challenge that many would rather die than go there.  In response he suggested, ‘then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’  It was a tidy and most practical response, but totally uncompassionate, which was the very point of Dickens’ story.

Before too much of our new year has elapsed, let’s consider whether any of Scrooge’s blatantly outrageous philosophies may still be lurking below the surface of our own consciences.  If we examine what we are now in the light of what we recall from our past lives of God’s practical provision for our needs, we might find a new focus that enables us to see whether there is some way in the future that we can respond to His love by caring for others.

I’m reminded of some words from the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer.  When I first heard them, I thought them just another prayer; only later did I come to recognise them as straight from the Bible:  “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16 - KJV).  If you haven’t made one already, they make an excellent New Year’s Resolution.

Aftermath

With the festive celebrations over, it’s time to clear Christmas away and look ahead to 2017.  One of the decisions to make as you do so is what to do with all those cards.  Not that many years ago, I used to analyse mine, sorting them into three piles.

In the first section were the ‘true’ Christmas cards, with picture of angels, babe-in-the-manger, shepherds and wise men, however characterised and simplified.  Next were those with traditional, mostly Dickensian, themes: the carriage and horses, candles, Christmas trees and bells, people in top hats and crinolines going to the church across the snow ... you know the sort.  Last of all were the ‘nothing to do with it’ cards, bearing robins, children dancing, cartoon figures carrying parcels, partridges in pear trees, etc.

In those days, I would mark down those so-called ‘Christian’ friends who had sent anything but ‘true’ cards.  But was I right to do so?

Many of the symbols in the ‘nothing to do with it’ pile, the holly and ivy, the mistletoe and the burning Yule log and the rest, - yes even Father Christmas - have been part of 'Christmas' since before Christmas began.  For millennia, there has been a celebration in the middle of winter for many reasons that have been recorded and explored in far worthier places than this blog. 

It is widely accepted that early Christians in Rome adopted December 25 as Christmas only to supersede a pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, scheduled at that time.  One commentary suggests that those shepherds to whom the angels told this wonderful news (Luke 2:8-20) wouldn’t have been on the hillside with their sheep in the middle of winter.  In winter, sheep would graze more in the daytime than during the cold middle eastern nights.  Pasturing of flocks at night indicates that this was a warmer season so it’s quite likely that Jesus was actually born at another time of year, making the whole concept of snow and winter as the background to the story completely false.

And is it right to condemn the Victorian theme?  We shouldn’t forget that Victoria's own parents were German; her mother, like Albert’s parents, was from Saxe Coburg and her father only the third generation of the Hanoverians to be born in England.  Much for which her consort Prince Albert is generally blamed was no more than their looking back to how their family had celebrated in the past.  We do the same when we take up our rose-tinted glasses and reminisce about the Christmases of our own childhood.

In my last blog, I mentioned Peter’s visit to Cornelius.  Just before he was taken to him, Peter had received a vision from God in which he was offered many things to eat that were considered ‘unclean’.  A voice told him, “Don’t call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:9-16).  The same concept applies here, whether we are considering the robins and holly or the fir trees and Father Christmas.  God made them all – perfectly – and, whether they represent Christmas or not, we are not to condemn them.

But if we strip all these familiar trappings away from what we understand as Christmas, what are we left with?  Many years ago, I discovered words that I think sum it up beautifully:

“And is it true ...

A baby in an ox’s stall?

The maker of the stars and sea

Become a child on earth for me? ...

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare

That God was Man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.”

from “Christmas” by John Betjeman (published in 1954)

When you clear away your Christmas cards this year, look once more at those illustrations, and the variety of their presentation and content and remember that all these things were made by God for us to enjoy.  Think fondly of the thoughts expressed by the senders of them ... and then recycle them gladly. 

Don't Knock It!

The fact that you’re reading this blog almost guarantees that you will use other social media, too.  It has become almost universal in recent years.  I expect many of you will also know of, if not be familiar with, ‘text-speak’.  Articulate texters, for example, use strange words where a single character replaces a whole syllable.  This tends to appeal to the younger generation – perhaps in this context that's the under-fifties – to some of whom this language has become almost ‘2nd n8r.’

E-mails have also brought with them another, and more gentle, linguistic phenomenon.  This is a whole new generation of acronyms.  I occasionally see SKS, in an appeal for favours from ‘some kind soul’, and an amusing comment may be terminated by LOL.  This could mean either ‘lots of laughter’, ‘laughs out loud’ or - as in an embarrassing political context not long ago - ‘lots of love’!  Someone who is uncertain of his authority, but wishes to join in an exchange of views, might add to his offering FWIW (for what it’s worth); a bolder participant might begin IMHO (in my humble opinion).

As usual, there are two sides to the debate about these, and many critics say they are contrived, a mere novelty, and degrade the rich heritage that is the English language.  Before you condemn them, though, I want to suggest that even these can direct our minds to God.  Let’s focus our Christmas thoughts on those last two items.

‘For what it’s worth’ – Jesus taught that we are of high value to God.  In Matt. 10:29-31 He tells us that we are worth more than many sparrows, each of which is individually precious.  Later in his Gospel, Matthew gives an account of separating ‘sheep’ from ‘goats’.  This decision will be based on the way people have treated each other, particularly those of  a lower level of society, the needy, the sick or those in prison.  Jesus says that the treatment offered or not offered to them is done ‘to Him’ (Matt. 25:32,40,45.)  We should be in no doubt of the worthiness to God of people who, to many, are the dregs of society.  Peter underlined this universality of God in his talk with the centurion Cornelius: ‘... God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.’ (Acts 10:34-35).

‘In my humble opinion’ is just an embellished form of the more familiar term ‘with respect.’  My dictionary tells me that humble is ‘having or showing a low estimate of one’s own importance’, and respect is ‘deferential esteem felt or shown towards a person or quality’.  In other words both terms imply placing a lower value on oneself than on the other party.

These phrases are rarely used with genuine feeling these days, however.  Often they are no more than a formula, an attempt to excuse an outrageous statement; and the expanded ‘with all due respect’ may well indicate that the speaker has no respect at all for his protagonist, and is by no means humble himself.

So, where do we look for real humility?  It ought to be found in someone whose high rank is in no doubt, but who doesn’t stand on his own importance, rather seeking out the lower echelons of society to join them instead (Phil. 2:6-8.)

Our Lord came to earth, not in a palace fit for a King, but to join common folk, people of equal worth to the king, in the person of the illegitimate child of a carpenter’s fiancée.  He was born in squalor and laid in a manger because there wasn’t a place in the inn for ‘people like them.’  We shouldn't really be surprised that true humility was found in an animals' feeding trough ... and soon was to live the life of a refugee!

Falling Leaves

Last weekend, we had a leaf-clearing morning at my church.  Tools were brought and shared, paths were swept and the grass was relieved of a generous covering of leaves and twigs.  Bags were filled and taken for disposal and donuts and coffee were enjoyed.  Aching backs were soothed later in the weekend.

Now that the leaves are all down from the trees, passing motorists get a far better view of the mock-gothic of the church building, and all around can see the trees in a new, naked splendour with the branches twisting and almost dancing around each other as they reach up to the autumn sunlight.  We can see the underlying structure that forms the basis for the familiar green shapes that will once more greet us next spring.

This weekend has seen the start of a new church year, a year that traditionally begins with the first Sunday in Advent.  Advent means 'coming', and that's a good way to start the year: reminding us what belonging to a church and being a follower of Jesus really means.  When Jesus left this earth at the end of His ministry here, his disciples were gazing after him; suddenly, two men in white - angels - were beside them and told them, "This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way ..." (Acts 1:11).

From that moment until now, and beyond, history carries us with it towards this specific point, the return of Jesus in glory, to judge and rule over the earth.  We don't know - any more than did those early believers to whom Paul wrote in Greece - when He will come.  However, we do know that it will be sudden (I Thess. 5:2) and we're told to be ready for his return, working to share His gospel so that others, too, can share in the blessings to come.  That's what the church is all about.

Like Lent, Advent is known as a 'solemn season', a time when we pay special attention to looking at ourselves, reviewing how we spend our lives, and trying to move closer to God's ideal, the way He wants us to live.  Just as we can see and measure the structure of the trees, now they haven't any leaves, so we can measure ourselves in this period of thoughtfulness.  We can examine the structure of our lives and see how they fit into that eternal structure, the blueprint for which we were created.

The verses in Paul's letter that follow the one I've quoted above  - indeed the whole of that first letter to the Thessalonians - are a good guide to living the Christian life.  Thessalonica was the chief city of Macedonia.  It lay on the Egnatian Way, the principal highway of its day, stretching from Rome to the Orient.  As such, it was very much the centre of an international, cosmopolitan culture, and thus presented the infant church with a whole range of glamorous worldly temptations.  Paul was well aware of this, and sought to encourage the members of that infant church as each tried to deal with all these threats to a new life as a believer in Jesus Christ.

As the preparations for Christmas dominate your life in these coming weeks, you may be looking for a 'breathing space', some relief from all the commercial pressures.  I invite you to read this letter - it will only take half an hour or so - and ask yourself whether your life reflects what you say you believe ... or not.  Paul, and his friends Silas and Timothy, had a great influence on the Thessalonians because they not only talked the talk ... they walked the walk.

Does your life do the same ... or is just masking the view, like the leaves on the trees?

Coming

Regular readers will know that, in the years since his death some thirty years ago, I have gained an increasing respect for my father.  As I look back, it seems there were often disagreements – even arguments – between us but, as I get older and learn more about people in general, and the age through which he lived, I have come to realise (in modern terms) ‘where he was coming from’.  Although he paid no regard to formal religion, and went to church only for weddings and funerals, he left me a worthy example of right living, and a number of wise sayings.  There were many occasions, for example, when I chose to ignore his instructions or advice; sometimes he would say, with an air of irate finality coupled with desperate resignation, “There’ll come a time, my boy, ...”, and the sentence would remain unfinished, for me to add whatever fate my imagination might provide.

I was reminded of these words recently when I read from Peter’s second letter, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief” (2 Peter 3:10).  Peter had just issued a warning about ‘scoffers’: people who alleged, in effect, that religion is rubbish, that Jesus would never come back.  They claimed that life would go on unchanged as it had since the creation, conveniently ignoring the matter of the flood, when God destroyed all but a handful of his creation because of the evil that it had embraced (verses 3-6).  

In just the same way, Peter wrote, the new generation would also be destroyed on the day of Judgement.  But when will that be?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that it will be when we least expect it (Matt. 24:36-41). 

Peter was writing to a generation for whom Jesus’ life on earth was recent history.  His words are just as applicable in the twenty-first century.  Today, as then, we are tempted to listen to the ‘worldly wise’: people who tell us that, in this post-modern age, we’re wasting our time being ‘good’.  According to them, any chance of a Second Coming has elapsed: after all, it hasn’t happened in 2,000 years – it just won’t happen now.

However, God doesn’t work to our timescale (see Psalm 90:3-6); we shouldn’t confuse what we construe as His bad timekeeping with His patience. He wants every last one of us to come to Him in repentance (v.9).  Peter teaches that God’s patience leads to our salvation (v.15).  It is vital that we are always on our guard against temptation, as Peter says in his letter (v.17), but it’s not a matter for undue apprehension.  I invite you to use a prayer that, many years ago, I used to hear every week as I attended Mass with my young family.  Somehow it seems particularly appropriate for the season of Advent, which begins in a couple of weeks.

“Deliver us, Lord, 

from every evil, 

and grant us peace in our day. 

In Your mercy 

keep us free from sin 

and protect us from all anxiety 

as we wait in joyful hope 

for the coming of our Saviour 

Jesus Christ.”

I wish you a worry-free Christmas when it comes!

Poppies ... and Other Flowers

It’s coming: a weekend of military nostalgia, when we watch the Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall, see the members of the Royal British Legion parading their navy-and-gold banners, and wear our poppies with pride.  But, nowadays, fewer TV viewers tune in to the Festival, the medals merrily bouncing on the chests of the legion were probably earned in Belfast, Basra or Helmand rather than Ypres or Passchendaele, Tobruk or Anzio, and we are confused about what it is that we are proud of as we pin that poppy to our lapel.

The history of the poppy is well-known.  When it was chosen as the symbol of the British Legion in 1921, many survivors remembered it as the only sign on life to be seen amidst scenes of utter devastation on the Western Front.  It was a reminder that life goes on, and that the Legion’s aim was to help survivors and the families of the fallen to cope with it in the years following the war.

Today, things are very different.  Many other wars have come and gone and, with the medical and surgical advances of the last century, there are proportionally far more survivors to be cared for.  The romantic images of the early twentieth century have given way to a different, and more immediate, picture of the human need resulting from war.

The idea of Remembrance with which past generations grew up, thinking fondly of those who were lost in war – or, as in my case, of uncles and cousins whom we never knew – and praising their bravery, has been transformed.  We now think of war as a concept, a terrible last resort for irresolvable international differences; we remember it in the sense of ‘let’s not forget that it still hovers spectrally in the background.’  Perhaps the poppy, with its specific historic origins, should be replaced by another flower: myosotis, the forget-me-not, which is already a symbol of love, of remembering a absent loved one.

Remembering is important.  Let me put it another way: forgetting is frustrating, sometimes painful and potentially damaging to relationships.  I’m reminded (pardon the pun!) of Forgetful Heart by my friend Lucy Mills (Darton Longman and Todd, 2014), the essence of which is neatly summed up in these words from the introduction: “I don’t just forget ordinary, trivial things.  I forget about who I really am, and what has been done for me.  I forget the One who made and redeemed me.”  In her book, Lucy explores the human tendency to forget, especially to forget God.

Poppies and forget-me-nots don’t appear in the Bible; indeed very few flowers do.  One that does is the lily, often associated with funerals, and devotion to a loved one.  The passage in Matthew’s gospel which includes the familiar words ‘consider the lilies of the field’ talks about putting God’s kingdom above all practical desires, safe in the knowledge that He will provide for our needs (Matt. 6:25-34).  The following note comes from a Greek lexicon by Louw & Nida, and is quoted from the NET Bible (http://netbibleorg).  “Though traditionally κρίνον has been regarded as a type of lily, scholars have suggested several other possible types of flowers, including an anemone, a poppy, a gladiolus, and a rather inconspicuous type of daisy.”

It’s interesting that the other flowers suggested include not only the poppy, but also the tall gladiolus, sometimes called sword lily named from the Latin gladius, a sword, very much a weapon of war.

Isaiah begins his vision of beauty by suggesting that “the wilderness will rejoice and blossom like a crocus” (Is. 35:1, NIV); other translations offer a rose (KJV) or a lily (NET).  A similar dilemma faced the translators when they looked at the Song of Solomon, where rose and lily compete once more as they try to express the supreme beauty of the lover by comparing the flower to the dull ordinariness of the thorn bushes. (Songs 2:1-2).

Perhaps the Good News has the edge; there the specific identity is subsumed in the simple ‘flower’, leaving the emphasis to fall on the absolute perfection of God’s Kingdom.

As you wear your poppy this year, don’t be confused by its meaning, but think of it as one of a whole posy of flowers, strewn in our path to remind us – like the variety of support provided by the Royal British Legion to the service community - of the richness of God’s provision for us all, here and in the hereafter.

Structured

I recall that, in the days when I attended worship in the Methodist Church, the steward introducing the morning service would often use the words “There are no additional notices this morning.”  It puzzled me; I wondered, ‘if there’s nothing to say, why bother to mention it?  Thinking further, maybe there is a purpose after all.  I had no idea then, and certainly none now, about what went on behind the scenes, but it seems likely that there was a check-list.  Successive items on this list might be, ‘mount rostrum’; ‘are there any additional notices?’; ‘introduce preacher’.  Put in this context, those words – apparently meaningless of themselves - are a reminder to us that there is a definite structure to worship, a framework that allows flexibility while ensuring that all the important items are covered.

Of course, our whole lives are structured in some way or other from cradle to grave.  Soon after we are born we have inoculations according to a health service record; legislation demands that we attend school between five and sixteen; the government aims that half of us or more will then go on to university; peer pressure and social convention directed us in our early years to join scouts, cubs, brigades, or some other youth organisation.  Then there are the laws of the land which govern our behaviour, discouraging us from theft, violence and breaking the speed limit.  We can’t escape structure in one form or another.

Our spiritual lives, too, conform to a pattern.  We are baptised when we come to faith ... or else as infants, later taking upon ourselves at confirmation the promises made on our behalf.  We meet weekly for worship: the writer to the Hebrews exhorted that the believers should “consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another ...” (Heb. 10:25).  We try to maintain a personal discipline of daily prayer and Bible reading and, if our lifestyle allows, we might also attend a mid-week social or study group. We each play as full a part in the life of the Church as we are able.  If we are called to some specific ministry, or even to ordination, then a prescribed path leads us through the appropriate training to that end.

There is even a structure which we can - and should - apply to our prayer life.  Our Lord gave us a template for our prayers: “This is how you should pray ...”, He said (Matt. 6:9ff).  How often do we chant this template as if it were, of itself, the ultimate prayer and consider our prayers ‘done’?  Instead, we should ponder its various clauses, and expand our prayers according to this recommended spread.

And a final thought, with the great feast of Christmas not far off.  Our Church year is structured, too.  As the seasons unfold, so one celebration logically follows another, each reminding us of some significant aspect of our faith, and together providing a variety of emphases for appropriate worship at each time of year.

So, next time you hear something apparently meaningless - like the announcement of no additional notices - question why this should be; perhaps you will be led to give thanks for God’s gift of a framework for life.