Christ Church

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem”

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass,” the Shepherds say, “which the Lord hath made known unto us,” albeit by way of an Angel. It is the Shepherd’s Christmas, their going to Bethlehem. Presumably they took the sheep with them. Tomorrow the Magi-Kings from Anatolia will make their way to Bethlehem via Jerusalem “hav[ing] seen his star in the East.” We easily forget what Matthew tells us. The Magi only learn about Bethlehem from Herod in his consultation with “all the chief priests and the scribes of the people together” in Jerusalem who say that Bethlehem is “where the Christ was to be born.” All come to Bethlehem and so must we. And why? That we, like Mary, might “keep all these things” “which were told by the shepherds,” “concerning this child,” and ponder them, like Mary, in our hearts.

All come to Bethlehem so that Bethlehem may abide in us. With the Magi-Kings coming at Epiphany tomorrow there will be, we might say, the break-out from Bethlehem. After presenting their gifts to the child who is God, and King, and Sacrifice, “they departed into their own country another way;” yet, as T.S. Eliot wonderfully puts it, “no longer at ease” in their former ways. Something has changed in them. It is what abides in them from the mystery of Bethlehem. Bethlehem abides in them and weighs in upon their minds. So too, I hope, for us.

The abiding presence of Bethlehem informs the Christian imaginary about the mystery of Christmas and of the Christian Faith itself. In carol and story, in art and in the great variety of crèches, the symbolic significance of Christ’s humble birth in Bethlehem, at once “the least of the cities of Judah” in Micah and yet “not the least” in Matthew’s account, an apparent contradiction that Richard Hooker explains and resolves, is signalled to us. The 15th century Florentine tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Fra Lippi captures something of the transformative fullness of the Christmas mystery. It is a crowded scene. Not easy to find any shepherds and their sheep there among the exotica of peacock and pheasant; an ox and ass are prominent in the stall, a greyhound lies in the foreground. There are horses and a great parade of people. The focus is on the Magi adoring the Child Christ seated on the lap of Mary. All come to Bethlehem.

It is a kind of reprise of Paradise, an image of the harmony and unity of God and the whole of his creation. The artistic images symbolise the meaning of Bethlehem for us as something that abides in us even in the break-out from Bethlehem. Epiphany in a way is about nothing more than Christmas for all people, omni populo, as John Cosin so clearly states. Epiphany season will be about attending to the mystery of the God who became flesh. It will undertake to teach us about God in his divine attributes and character and what that means for us. It will, in other words, carry the meaning of Bethlehem with us into the meaning of Jerusalem. They are the twin poles, already circling around us, of the Christian understanding of God’s deep and intimate engagement with our humanity without which we are less than ourselves. What is revealed and made known in the mystery of Christmas and Epiphany belongs to the fullness of understanding about our humanity in its truth. They signal the profound idea that we are capax dei, capable of God but only through the mercy of God and our thinking upon that mystery.

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“She shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS.”

The readings for the Sunday after Christmas provide an extended commentary on the radical meaning of the Incarnation. It is at once the redemption of our humanity and its restoration. Isaiah’s prophecy quoted in the Gospel about the Son born of the Virgin being named, “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us,” finds its fullest meaning in Jesus as saviour. Note the emphasis – JESUS is printed in capital letters twice in this Gospel passage from St. Matthew.

The Gospel complements Paul’s theological reflection on the birth of Jesus Christ. While the Gospel gives the circumstances of his birth as being “on this wise,” particularly emphasizing Joseph’s dilemma and its solution, the Epistle offers a theological account of its meaning and purpose. It is “when the fulness of the time was come, [that] God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” These are the two makings that illuminate the meaning of Christmas about the divinity and humanity of Jesus. “‘God sent His Son” – there His divine [nature]; ‘made of a woman’- here His human nature”… “That from the bosom of His Father before all worlds; this, from that womb of His mother in the world” (Lancelot Andrewes, Xmas 1609). The Son of God is not made of a Spirit but made of a creature, made of a woman, “made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin” (BCP, p.79).

As Irenaeus so wonderfully puts it, Christ is “that pure one, opening purely that pure womb [meaning Mary], which regenerates our humanity unto God and which he himself made pure” (Adv. Haer. IV. 33.11). His conception and birth which are about his being with us in the truth of our humanity is through the purity of Mary, the emblem of our true humanity considered simply qua human. That purity of our humanity belongs to the sinlessness of Christ. It is “but ex muliere, and no more; of the Virgin alone by the power of the Holy Ghost, without mixture of fleshly generation. By virtue whereof no original sin was in Him, just born He was, … and no law could touch Him”(Andrewes). In her we were never the better for factum ex muliere, for his being made of a woman, made of the pure substance of Mary. The classical and orthodox teaching is repeatedly and constantly that Christ is like us in all respects save sin. All this belongs to the first making, made of a woman.

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