Year: 2012

“There was no room for them in the inn.”

Death and taxes. Homeless in Bethlehem. “He came unto his own and his own received him not,” we heard last night. This morning we hear that “there was no room for them in the inn.” God’s Son is homeless in Bethlehem, in the city of David, where Joseph has come “to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.” Only God could make something of great joy out of the endless trials and sad realities of human life. “And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.”

It is a compelling and poignant image and one which has captured the imagination of artists and poets. A manger. There is no mention of a stable or of anything else at the manger other than Mary and Joseph, the child wrapped in swaddling bands, the shepherds and, then, later, the Kings. Angels? Well, perhaps. But the so-called infancy narratives of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are quite sparse with their information. Yet, the fundamental idea and reality is more than enough and quite capable of embracing the works of holy imagination. That humble scene so briefly described in the Gospels becomes a veritable menagerie in the traditions of art and poetry, music and song.

We could blame the carols, themselves the wondrous vessels of devotion that convey so much of the doctrine and the idea of Christ’s Incarnation. Hymns and carols shape our understanding of holy things far more than perhaps we realize and for the most part, that is a good thing, though it should make us leery and more than a little suspect of the agendas of political correctness that issue in proscriptive changes to terms and images that result in a loss of theological understanding and meaning.

“Cradled in a stall was he/with sleepy cows and asses” the 15^th century carol Puer Nobis Nascitur tells us, a carol which confronts us, too, with one of the most disturbing stories of the Nativity, the Flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s policy of infanticide, seeking to remove a potential rival to his kingship, “all the little boys he killed/At Bethlem in his fury”. Death. There is blood in Bethlehem. The massacre of the little ones.

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“When all things were in quiet silence
and the night was in the midst of her swift course,
then thy almighty Word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne”

It is a wonderful image. It speaks to this night of images and to this season of the fullness of images. “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth,” we hear in the great Christmas Gospel. Such is the glory of the Incarnate Word, the Word who is the only-begotten Son of the Father, the Word who is “the true light, which lighteth every one that cometh into the world.” Word, Light and Son; these are the great images of Christmas.

Yet, it might seem so strange to hear such words on Christmas night. They stand in such stark contrast to all of the busyness, bustle and bother of Christmas. They signal something so completely different from all the busy images of this season in our contemporary culture; the images of glittering candy canes, jolly fat Santas riding scooters, lighted reindeers, and inflated snowmen, abominable or not, that adorn the lawns and houses along with a few images, too, at least a few, of the holy scene of Bethlehem. How does this emphasis upon the Word of God compete with all these things? By giving them depth and meaning without which they are just so much tinsel and wrap, empty and devoid of significance. Without them we “know only,” as T.S. Eliot puts it, “a heap of broken images.” These words are the antidote to the real poverty of our age, our spiritual poverty. They offer the redemption of images.

In and through all the trappings of the season there is something more, something profound and holy. It is captured in the great readings of Christmas night from The Letter to the Hebrews and from The Gospel according to St. John. Thundering words, we might say, that speak to us about God’s “almighty Word leap[ing] down from heaven, from thy royal throne.”

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“Who art thou?”

In a way, Advent is the season of questions. And the questions of Advent reach a kind of crescendo on the Fourth Sunday in Advent in a barrage of questions which, paradoxically, are all about John the Baptist. But, of course, everything about John the Baptist is really about the One who comes.

Our Gospel story has a wonderful intensity to it that is indicative of the strong desire to know in the face of the confusions of the world. Such is the significance, we might say, of “the witness of John,” especially in our rather skeptical and cynical age which despairs of thought and where questions are merely rhetorical ways of dismissing any serious encounter with what might just challenge us and change us. Skepticism about ideas, we might say, is the leading idea of our times. Such is a form of darkness, a kind of dogmatic despair.

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“My Lord, and my God”

The Apostolic Saints are part of the Advent and none more so than Thomas, “called Didymus,” whom we more commonly call ‘Doubting Thomas.’ In the darkest time of nature’s year, there is another form of darkness that deepens nature’s darkness into something even more strange and fearful. The darkness of doubt leads to despair, the death of souls and communities, of cultures and churches.

Thomas’ feast day falls always within the season of Advent.  He is the advent saint par excellence not just because his day of commemoration falls always within Advent and so close to the winter solstice and to Christ’s holy birth, the birth of God’s Son into our world of darkness, but because his doubting leads not to the darkness of despair and death but to the light of faith and hope. The doubting of Thomas provides for “the greater confirmation of our faith,” as another Thomas, Thomas Aquinas, reminds us.

The propers for his feast-day illumine the radical nature of Christ’s Incarnation. Ephesians reminds us of the fellowship of faith, that we are “fellow-citizens with the saints,” that we are “of the household of God,” “an holy temple in the Lord,” “an habitation of God through the Spirit,” and that Jesus Christ himself is “the chief corner-stone,” the structural and animating principle upon which all these images of indwelling depend.

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