Betjeman for Christmas

For Christmas

Catching the gaze

This is the latter part of a homily I gave at a Christmas service for the Brotherhood of St Laurence last week.

Here you can see the hipster nativity that has been doing the rounds lately. My pondering of this has gone from the initial shock of wise men bearing Amazon boxes on their segways and the shepherd with his iPad, to gradually realising what's going on at the centre of the picture. See Mary and Joseph posing for a photo around the manger. See their radiant look. It reminds me of nothing more than a photo of a friend of mine, a moment of meeting with the newborn baby of another friend: adoration, wonder, awe. This from eyes that are sometimes a bit world-weary, but in this photo those eyes are full of life and radiant gentleness. And the look from the baby to my friend: adoration, trust, wonder. That look is full of pure gift, flowing grace.

Looking at Mary and Joseph in this modern imagining of the nativity, a question comes to me. What is it like to look towards God? Is it like taking a selfie? There’s plenty of smug talk about how the selfie is just the latest indulgence of our basic narcissism, yet more evidence of our need to be the stars of our own long-running media show. I've seen people driving cars while taking pouting photos of themselves -- truly a scary spectacle! Some people seem so driven to seek the camera’s gaze that they cannot sit down to a meal without photographing their food. Surely you've seen it happen. But perhaps behind the camera there is a deeper hunger to be looked on and loved. Even when we are staring down the camera barrel we need someone to return our gaze and look back in love.

How does God's look towards us?

Have you ever sat in a busy cafe next to a baby in a high chair? Have you noticed how the baby will scan the room, looking for someone to return their gaze? Think of how they respond when their eyes meet yours: they smile back, or frown back, or give you that unmistakable quizzical look. A baby searches with unflagging zeal and ingenuity for someone to meet and return their gaze.

This is what God’s looking towards us is like. In Jesus, God with us, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, God is looking at us because he cannot take his eyes off us. In the infant Jesus, God comes and looks towards us out of absolute vulnerability and helplessness. And those infant eyes are full of endless engrossing adoration, trust, wonder.

Can we hold the gaze and return with a look filled with adoration, wonder, and awe?

Shadows by the blaze

This is the longer version of the first part of a homily I gave at the Christmas services at the Brotherhood of St Laurence last week. This is the part of the homily that addressed the readings, which are included here, plus some other material that didn't make it to the final cut.

Over the past couple of months I've had the great joy and blessing of coming to the Brotherhood, and to get to know you here.

Just lately it's been a privilege to speak with some people about how Christmas can be a time of mixed feelings. Around all the light and parties perhaps there are those spots of grey, shadows and palpable gaps that remain with us as we travel through the whirl and bustle of the party season. Perhaps we each have people we carry in our hearts whose absence weighs around the edges of the joyful stuff of Christmas — our carols, our food, our beverage of choice, our merry-making. There are people I have loved — and who have loved me, often towards my better self, sometimes very much in spite of my lesser self — where the shadows and gaps of time, distance or death are all mixed in with the blaze of festivity. Perhaps this is true for you.

Our readings today have some striking images of light and dark that help us to hold the festivities and the grey moments together.

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onwards and for evermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

(Isaiah 9.2-7) 

Isaiah speaks of people not simply walking in darkness, but deep darkness. Maybe we can imagine it to be like sleepwalking. The promise of light comes in the form of a baby — “a child is born for us, a son is given.” And what a wonderful sequence of names that really describe the gift of light in the present darkness: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace. (Can anyone who knows Handel hear this passage without the following coming to mind?)

I think the Gospel of John echoes this very well — the light shines in the darkness, so powerfully that the darkness is itself swallowed up. It looses its power to consume. This blazing light is a person: a person whose very nature is to bridge the gaps in the way people relate to God, and to each other. I think Handel catches this contest between light and dark so well in his setting of the centre of this passage from Isaiah, with his constant walking bass (the people walking in darkness, to whom the child is given) and the radiant setting of the series of titles -- Wonderful Counsellor, etc.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. 

(Matthew 1.18-25)

When we turn to Matthew we see a complicated picture in Joseph’s desire to do the right thing by dismissing Mary quietly — seeking to spare her the pain of public shame. Joseph is a man of heavily mixed feelings: wanting to do right in a situation where he feels wronged when he discovers Mary's pregnancy. I wonder if the gospel writer is being ironic when he describes Joseph as a righteous man just when he is contemplating a very dark, quite unrighteous, action: abandoning a vulnerable woman and her child to a fate that would certainly have spelt homelessness and victimisation. It is very unlikely Mary could have returned to her family after the marriage contract was broken on account of her pregnancy.

When I read this passage I can't help wondering if it could be that the angel appearing in Joseph’s dream was a drastic last stand to change his mind when angelic approaches in his waking hours failed to break through? Looking through the prism of the gospel we would say Joseph was certainly chosen by God to be the protector of Mary and Jesus, and for this reason we revere him as the first protector of the Church. But it remains that the story could have ended very differently and entirely in line with the mores and conventions of the time. Looking through the prism of Matthew's telling of the story we can certainly say that God's choosing Joseph still required his all-to-human assent, his willingness to trust in what God was calling him to do and to join in.

Joseph’s change of heart is a move from darkness to light. And again, the transition is towards a light that comes in the form of a person.

Joseph goes from acting rightly by the worldly conventions of his time and place to doing good in helping God to be present to his people. The good is to protect a baby with a momentous name: Emmanuel, God with us. This is the reason we now revere Joseph as the first protector of the Church. As we read on in Matthew we encounter the magi, and Herod. Joseph's protection is both a means for people to come to Jesus, and a way of helping Jesus to withdraw to a more sheltered place when overwhelming danger comes calling. Joseph's action in taking Mary as his wife is divine because it steps outside the patterns of power and judgement that form so much of how people lived in his world, as much then as now. Joseph shows mercy and loving-kindness when he has the choice to act otherwise. In making the choice towards mercy and loving-kindness, Joseph is displaying the attributes of God in his own life. His life is his witness.