I strive to believe in a God who creates us
until I see sunsets and hear blackbirds sing;
But the red on a robin is too lovely for doubting
-- it grows in my soul from its slight mustard seed.
I strive to believe in a God of strong loving
until I see arms bared and feeding the poor;
they sacrifice and give in selfless joy-giving
in places forgotten by justice or peace.
Winter is the miracle,
turning liquid to hard flint.
Views through jack-frosted glass
transmute base to pure gold,
dew to glinting hoarfrost,
and drab brick to rare majesty.
Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:7
Reading the account of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s Gospel through this cultural lens suggests we need to read the narrative differently.
Luke 2 says that all the inns of Bethlehem were full when Mary and Jos eph arrived (Luke 2:7), which implies their arrival did not occur according to schedule, which seems quite likely given Mary’s pregnancy reaching full term and the high tension surrounding the census. Their pre-booked accommodation was otherwise rented out. Luke suggests that an innkeeper found them emergency accommodation, but that bed could not have been the stable of popular imagination because of Jos eph’s high status.
Most people in the Middle East kept animals for transport, milk, and food. It represented economic necessity. Some animals—especially those regarded as ritually ‘clean’—were kept indoors, particularly during the colder times of year, in a sectioned-off part of the house. They would have been safer that way, and the larger animals’ body heat would also have helped warm the room. Read this way, the holy family were not lodged in a draughty stable but were safe inside the innkeeper’s own rooms, and Jesus was probably born on the Innkeeper’s own bed.
Most of us suffer considerable stress when these two aspects differ beyond a certain extent, so most of us merely pretend—sometimes to ourselves and certainly to other people—not to acknow ledge the way they differ. It’s always the inner thoughts and drives that get suppressed. That suppression is rarely conscious, so it’s un helpful to think in terms of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘being two faced’ because all of us live two opposing lives in this way.
God is infinite and knows everything. He therefore knows our real self as well as the self we try to project to other people. He knows the whole truth, and yet He always loves us with His trademark infinity and nothing can ever stop Him from loving us. He knows our inner, shadow life better than we do.
All of us pray but which of these two selves (the outer and the inner) does the prayer originate from? If it’s the self that looks outwards, then we may be praying for things that we think are respectable, nice, helpful such as peace and requests for healing—for our friends and family, but maybe for us as well. But if we are not really in touch with our inner thoughts, then our prayers are incomplete.
If we pretend to God that we are always nice, always Christian, then we are hiding parts of our lives from Him and are, in effect, refusing to let God deal with the inner hurts and unhealthy drives. We therefore limit the scope in which we can serve Him and be healed by Him.As we grow in faith, there will always come a point when it feels as though God is not listening to our prayers, or that He hears them but ignores them, or is completely absent. That’s entirely normal. At such times it’s almost certainly we ourselves who are limiting what God can do in and through us, because we are telling God not to look closely or be aware of our inner lives. We’re ashamed of them and don’t want anyone, let alone a ‘nice’ God, to see them. But in this way we prevent a huge amount of their power from helping our prayers.
But we still need to talk to God, although one temptation is to think that God is so holy that He won’t want someone like us to bother Him. This instinct is not wise because, as Jesus said to his first disciples, ‘It’s not those who are well but those who are poorly who need a
doctor’ (Luke 5:31–32).
We may feel shame or worse if we think this is happening to us as we approach God. It’s probably best to be very matter of fact and simply confess as each part of our private inner life comes to light. God wants us to speak honestly, saying something like, ‘Please help me to cope with being the person that I really am’ or ’Please heal the bits of my life I don’t like, can’t face, won’t ack now ledge’. This growth into honesty as we pray will energise our prayer and make it more authentic.
As Christmas approaches, it can be useful to remember that Jesus came to earth precisely for people like us, to bring us closer to God. As John 3:16 says, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever truly believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life’. And, as he said, ‘The truth will set us free’ (John 8:21).
Exercise Tell God that you love Him and want Him. In silence, confess those things you feel safe acknowledging. In each case, say sorry but don’t dwell too long: rather, ask for forgiveness then gently move on. Ask God to give you enough courage to confront whatever He wants us to consider next. Keep reminding yourself that God loves you deeply.
This was also the period when Richard made great strides in the contemplative life and is thought to have had his first mystical experience. About it he said, ‘I did not think anything like it or anything so holy could be received in this life.’ Sadly for Richard, the secular life in the form of politics intervened and his old friend’s lands were confiscated in 1322, which forced Richard onto the road again. After several years wandering from place to place—reportedly pitching up in Paris, where records from the Sorbonne suggest that he studied theology—he finally arrived back in Yorkshire, at the village of Hampole, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire. It was here at the Cistercian nunnery that he died in 1349, having become something of a spiritual adviser to the nuns resident there. For this reason, Richard is sometimes ref erred to as ‘Richard Rolle de Hampole’. He also wrote spiritual guides for the nuns and religiously inclined women generally. His main devotee was Dame Margaret Kirkby, a religious recluse (an anchoress) who he is claimed to have cured of an ailment that rendered her speech less merely by visiting her. It was for her benefit that he wrote a commentary on the Psalms and, in particular, The Form of Perfect Living, a guide to the reclusive life, when she was still a young woman embarking on her spiritual journey—both of which were written in (Middle) English. It was Margaret who, after Richard’s death, was instrumental in establishing his reputation. She even moved into the priory at Hampole where he died, to spend the last ten years of her own life there.
Richard Rolle was one of the first pre-Reformation writers to write in the vernacular, the native tongue of the readers. His works were even more widely read than those of Chaucer in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and his influence endured right up until the Reformation itself in the sixteenth century. His works include letters, poems, scriptural commentaries, and treatises on spiritual perfection. The famous poem The Pricke of Conscience was for a long time att ributed to him. Perhaps his best known work is The Fire of Love (written in Latin with the title Incendium Amoris), in which Rolle provides an account of his mystical experiences, which he describes as being of three kinds: a physical warmth in his body, a sense of wonderful sweetness, and a heavenly music that accompanied him as he chanted the Psalms. It is because of such rapturous accounts of spiritual development that Rolle is regarded as one of the great English mystics.
John Booth
Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers’.
Many New Testament writers allude to this latter verse. For example, look at the way John starts his Gospel: his first major character is John the Baptist, who is asked, ‘Are you the prophet?’ (John 1:21). And the very first gossip concerning Jesus is Philip’s comment to Nathan iel, ‘we have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law!’ (John 1:45).
The similarities between Moses and Jesus include:–
For centuries, the Jewish people had been expecting a Messiah-like figure. They did not know what he would be like: some of their ideas were widely off the mark—many wanted a military leader to help them rid themselves of their hated Roman overlords. But quite often the Old Testament prophets were accurate. For example:
Moses says, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers’ (which means he would be Jewish).
Jesus said, ‘Holy Father, protect [the disciples] by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.’ John 17:11b
At about the time of Jesus, the Jewish people regarded God as both remote and untouchable (‘transcendent’), yet He was also present in the here and now (‘immanent’). His transcendence was a consequence of His utter purity while his imminence demonstrated His desire to operate in human lives in works of comfort, love, and miracle.
With time, God’s transcendence came to outweigh His immanence to the extent that even saying ‘God’ was forbidden. He was so completely holy that a sinful person speaking such a word was blasphemy.
As a direct result, there arose a wide array of phrases that enabled people to refer to Him while avoiding these prohibitions. One such was to talk about ‘the Name’. It occurs most often in the poetical Scriptures, such as Psalm 145:1 ‘I will praise your name’. Here, the verse makes most sense when the word ‘name’ is taken to mean God Himself. There are many examples in the psalms, such as 9:1 and 34:3.
So when Jesus says God gave him ‘the name’, he is claiming divinity.
The best known example of ‘name’ referring to God occurs in the template prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples when he was teaching them how to pray. The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9–13 starts, ’Our Father … hallowed be your name’. The prayer therefore starts with two roundabout ways of referring to God, first ‘Father’ then ‘name’.
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is telling us to pray to a God who is holy but reachable. By saying ‘Father’ he is referring to the intimacy of a God who cares for us, and wants to be in a loving relationship with us.
But by using ‘name’ in this way, he is also reminding us that God is utterly holy, completely‘other’, and different from us because He is sinless and spiritual.
The Transfiguration remembers the occasion when the disciples were allowed to glimpse Christ in his true, divine glory. That vision was given to sustain them on the road ahead as they journeyed toward Jerusalem and the unimaginable horror of the first Holy Week.
The Transfiguration is usually celebrated on 6 August, which always occurs during the long, teaching season of Trinity. It helps remind us that Jesus is divine as well as human, and demonstrates that divinity better than any other event during his life.
The Transfiguration is also remembered on the Sunday before Lent, which is appropriate because it helps remember Christ’s glory through much suffering and hardship such as the darkness of Good Friday.
For that one moment, ‘in and out of time’,
On that one mountain where all moments meet,
The daily veil that covers the sublime
In darkling glass fell dazzled at his feet.
There were no angels full of eyes and wings
Just living glory full of truth and grace.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin.
Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar
Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are.
Poem by Malcolm Guite © reproduced with permission from https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2021/02/14/a-sonnet-on-the-transfiguration/
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
may your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
may your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
so free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
may your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
may your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of God.
© John O’Donohue, from To bless the space between us:
A Book of Blessings
I saw ‘A new heaven and a new earth’, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
Revelation 21:1
At the time of Jesus, the Jewish people had no developed ideas of an afterlife. For example, many believed in a strange limbo-like existence called Sheol (pronounced as something between ‘shole’ or ‘shay-ol’). It was said to be dark, maybe cold and damp, and the souls residing there lay dormant—in effect imprisoned—while awaiting liberation which, in effect, meant a form of oblivion.
Following Jesus, his followers were better able to describe the afterlife. But many of their descriptions sound rather odd, because life with God is so different from life on earth that we have nothing with which to compare it: no language can describe the indescribable.
But St John attempted to describe heaven in Revelation 21, employing a language filled with images and metaphor at the centre of which is a concept he called ‘The New Jerusalem’. It all sounds rather odd—or even eccentric and psychedelic. But it’s worth our trying to understand what he’s saying.
John starts describing heaven by saying, ‘There was no longer any sea’. The Jews feared primordial chaos, which explains why He began His creation by separating land and sea: removing the sea removed peril and unpredictability. Similarly, the seas and oceans create nat ural barriers bet ween nations and people groups, so removing the sea will re-allow the intermingling and mixing of people as God intends.
But perhaps the biggest problem concerns the way the sea was a home to evil. In Revelation 13:1, for example, ‘the beast’ is des cribed as living in the sea, so rem oving the waters implies that evil itself had gone, thereby removing opportunities for rebellion against God’s from His creation. With evil gone, John goes on to say that heaven will have no more death, mourning, weeping, pain (Revel ation 21:4), curses (Revelation
22:3), or night (Revelation 21:25 and 22:5).
The Benedictus is a biblical song (or ‘canticle’) comprising the text of Luke 1:68–79. It takes its name from the first word of the Latin text, Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel ...(‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel …’)
The Benedictus is recited during a traditional service of Morning Prayer where it usually concludes with the so-called doxology ‘Glory be to the Father …’ which was added much later.
This canticle has been called ‘The Song of Zechariah’ since the earliest years of Christianity. In context, Zechariah was a high priest in Jerusalem. He and his wife Elizabeth were childless which, in those days, as interpreted as a result of divine displeasure. One day, Zechariah was ministering in the temple when he saw the Archangel Gabriel in a vision, who told him that he would soon be the father of John the Baptist, who would be ‘Great in the sight of God’ (Luke 1:5–25).
Things then went wrong: Gabriel punished Zechariah and struck him dumb. He seems to have said something that was taken for dis belief in God’s providence, although the encounter looks extremely similar to the Virgin Mary’s almost identical conversation with Gabriel after which she was blessed.
Nine months later after the encounter, after John the Baptist was born, John the Baptist’s family gathered to choose a name for the mir aculous baby. Elizabeth seemed to override her husband’s choice of name for the baby, Zechariah agreed, and his dumbness was rev ersed. The Benedictus therefore represents Zechariah’s first words after wards, as a hymn of praise in reaction to his re-acceptance by God.
The words of the Benedictus offer a Jewish way of praising God. They also prophesy that the baby will grow to become a spiritual giant. For example, God speaks through Zechariah’s newly opened mouth (in verse 7, opposite) saying that John will be the forerunner to the Messiah. That he calls Jesus ‘Lord’ implies divinity. The phrase ‘dawn from on high’ is often taken to refer to Isaiah 9:2–7, ‘The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned’, which is a classic messianic text that is read for example on Christmas Day.
1 Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, ♦
who has come to his people and set them free.
2 He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour, ♦
born of the house of his servant David.
3 Through his holy prophets God promised of old ♦
to save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all that hate us,
4 To show mercy to our ancestors, ♦
and to remember his holy covenant.
5 This was the oath God swore to our father Abraham: ♦
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
6 Free to worship him without fear, ♦
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.
7 And you, child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, ♦
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
8 To give his people knowledge of salvation ♦
by the forgiveness of all their sins.
9 In the tender compassion of our God ♦
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
10 To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, ♦
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and shall be for ever.
Amen.
