Advent 2024 : 14

 

The biographer Luke tells us about shepherds and angels (Luke 2.8-20).

When the heavenly soldier taking point appears in the Nightwatch camp, the rest of his squad close behind him, the shepherds are terrified. What news is this, that cannot wait till daybreak? News of a long-awaited military deliverer – is this, then, the advance guard? Yet the message is of peace, the sign, a vulnerable newborn. Dawn has not yet broken the horizon, but it is on the way, as Zechariah had so recently prophesied, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and guide their feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:78, 79). This, then, is good news of great joy for those whose bodies carry the tension of knowing death is nearby, just beyond the circle of light, biding its time in the darkness.

In response to this revelation of joy, the shepherds make a journey, both literally and metaphorically, through the darkness, from the edge to the centre, from the darkness to the light, from being on constant guard to being in the presence of peace.

It is a journey they not only make for themselves but draw others into. For this night, at least, we can sleep easy.

But then they must return, to their flocks, to their watch, to keeping guard against predators in the night. For now, the threat has withdrawn, but it will return. Within two years, there would be weeping in Bethlehem.

This is not a one-way move from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. Both are a gift, from God, for our survival, for our flourishing. We are invited to apprentice from God in how to respond to fear, and how to respond to peace. And how to move back and forth between the two.

Now, as then, some people get stuck in their fear.

You need not be one of them. Be more shepherd.

 

Advent 2014 : 13

 

As well as recording the journey of the magi, the biographer Matthew also tells us about Joseph, who was the husband of Mary, and was Jesus’ earthly father. I do not doubt the historicity of Joseph, but Mathew offers such a brief record that he comes to us as a character in a story; and while I do not claim to know what Joseph experienced in his body, I do want to offer a psychoanalytical reading of that story.

As Jospeh sleeps, an angel comes to him in a dream. And this visitation divides his sleep in two, ante and post.

There are more than one kind of sleep. Sleep can be an expression of the sympathetic nervous system, in which case it is a form of flight – of escaping from a situation we do not want to face – or freezing – a keeping very still, in the hope that the threat will pass. Some people whose sympathetic nervous system is stuck on ‘on’ will sleep the day away. But this sleep, though it serves a self-preserving purpose, is not restorative. In contrast, sleep can be an expression of the parasympathetic nervous system: once danger has passed, our bodies relax and, in rest, including sleep, experience a renewing.

Facing a threat situation, Joseph resolves to do what can only be seen as the least-worst possible action. And this is the resolution of internal wrestling, which will have left its imprint on his heart, his brain, his muscles. But rather than act on his resolve, Joseph sleeps on it, perhaps fleeing from the consequences or hoping that, when he gets up again, the situation might somehow have resolved itself. This is, perhaps, the sleep of a condemned man, a man considered righteous who finds himself in an impossible situation. Yet after the angel has visited him in a dream, Jospeh sleeps the restorative sleep of a man who has been delivered from peril, and rises refreshed and able to act confidently, and to create a home for Mary and for Jesus.

I want to suggest that the switch from sympathetic nervous system to parasympathetic system comes through revelation, which ultimately comes from God. The instrument of revelation will often be our own bodies, designed with the gift of a sympathetic nervous system to detect and respond to threat and a parasympathetic nervous system to detect and respond to the passing of danger. But when our bodies become unreliable witnesses, revelation may need to come through some other messenger, whether an angel in a dream, the counsel of wise friends, or the expertise of a psychotherapist.

 

Advent 2024 : 12

 

The biographer Matthew fills in parts of the infancy narrative that the biographer Luke leaves out. It is Matthew who records the visit of the magi. They come, fearless, to Herod’s court: and why would they fear, for they are envoys, ambassadors from one royal court to another, come to congratulate Herod on an heir whose birth secures his kingdom? Herod had many sons, including those he would send into exile, those he would have murdered, and those who would rule after him in a more limited fashion; but this was not one of them. It turns out that their fearlessness is their fatal flaw, with tragic unintended consequences. Fear is a gift from God, literally a lifesaver. God will send an angel to teach the magi the fear of the Lord – whose actions God fears, and how God would respond – to instruct them, in this circumstance, to flee, to take flight by night.

Herod is afraid, and all his court with him. Fear spreads through Jerusalem, for who can be sure how Herod will respond, and who will survive his response?

As it happens, the first response of Herod, a convert to Judaism, is wise. He turns to those who can instruct him in God’s wisdom, who inform him that the one who is to shepherd God’s people will come from Bethlehem. They are quoting from the Book of the Prophet Micah (one part of a single scroll that collected the short writings associated with twelve prophets, which, along with other Jewish scrolls, found its way to the Great Library and Museum – research institution – of Alexandria, where the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Alexandrian – koine – Greek) who foresaw the defeat of Israel by the Assyrians, and of Judah by the Neo-Babylonians, and a future restoration for a remnant under a leader who would enable them to live securely – free from fear.

Herod is instructed in the ways and promise of God, that a time of fear that has existed for centuries – including Herod’s own paranoia – is about to come to an end. For fear cannot be sustained forever.

But Herod is not able to relax – his body, so shaped by fear at a physiological level, is not able to regulate. His sympathetic nervous system is stuck on ‘on,’ and his parasympathetic nervous system is stuck on ‘off.’ And the population of Bethlehem will suffer a massacre as the result.

 

Advent 2024 : 11

 

It isn’t part of the infancy narratives, but there’s this moment in Advent when we read of John, the one who prepared the way for Jesus, now an adult:

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptised by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance ... Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3.7-9)

The imagery is rooted in the Garden of Eden, in the serpent who tricks the first humans to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before they are ready for such food; and in the resulting promise God makes to Eve that her seed will crush the seed of the serpent’s head, even as that seed bites at the heel of her own seed. (God will teach Eve’s seed how to fight the serpent.)

Many of those who came to John were vipers, those who had sided with Rome and whose actions wounded their own people: tax farmers, soldiers of the client king.

Jesus himself will take up the image, applying it not to collaborators with Rome but to those scribes and Pharisees whose demands placed an injurious burden on the people, and asking how they will avoid the fire of hell?

The wrath John speaks of is not the wrath of an angry God, but the wrath of Rome. The irony is that those who have gambled on Rome have realised, almost too late, that Rome will destroy them. Likewise, the hell Jesus speaks of is not the action of a righteous and redemptive God, but the imminent action of Rome, whose legions will burn Jerusalem to the ground. Who has taught the crowd to flee the coming wrath? Who might yet teach the scribes and Pharisees? John is amazed to realise that it is none other than God who has taught them.

God has taught crowds who had responded to fear of Rome by fawning to Rome, the better – in this context, the godly – action of flight. To flee to the shelter of a loving God.

John sees through the outward appearance of vipers to their deepest desire, to be trees, that bear good fruit.

You are not a viper; you are a tree.

You are made in the likeness of God. That means that your nature, like God’s, is good. At the most fundamental level, you are good, not evil – any more than God is evil. But you are afflicted by sin – by opposition to God and those who bear God’s resemblance – in much the same way as human bodies are afflicted by cancer: it is not inherent to who we are and can be overcome. When God looks at you, God does not see an offence that must somehow be mitigated against, God sees God’s own likeness afflicted by sin and responds with compassion. Compassion is not wishing you could do something about someone else’s situation, it is acting for their deliverance from that situation.

John is amazed that even the most unlikely candidates get in on that deliverance. Jesus, likewise, holds out this amazing hope. In him, all that was lost is restored, all that was disfigured is transformed. As Moses lifted up the statue of a serpent on a pole and all who looked upon it were healed of deadly poison, so will Jesus be lifted up: the condemned man on a cross, the viper on a tree who turns out to be a tree – the tree of life, no less – in a garden of trees.

But it starts with being taught – apprenticed; being apprentices, or disciples – in fleeing wrath, in taking flight to refuge in the arms of Love.

Happy Advent, you brood of vipers!

 

Advent 2024 : 10

 

God is the only Three Persons of whom you should never be afraid. You should be afraid – very afraid – of anyone who tells you that you ought to fear God. They will teach you fear, for therein is the heart of abuse in the name of the Church.

But how do we help people who have become entrenched in their (preferred) fear response? How do we learn the difference between holy and unholy responses to fear? The only answer I know is that this comes to us through revelation, and so we must bring our fears before God, seeking wisdom.

The infancy narratives, of John (the Baptist) and Jesus, are pregnant with examples.

Zechariah is afraid of the angel, a creature he has not encountered before. He opts to stand up to the angel – perhaps his habitual response to fear is to fight – but this is a mistake. A priest, chosen to enter the Holy of Holies, Zechariah holds the earthly power God turns on its head. In God’s mercy and grace (for the angel is a manifestation of God’s creative word) Zechariah is given a nine-month lesson in being silent and still – the freeze response, the antidote to the fight response. When his tongue is freed, it is his neighbours who express fear; but Zechariah responds declaring that these are signs that God is about to rescue them from the hands of their enemies, that they might serve God without fear.

Mary also stands her ground – the fight response – in the presence of the angel. But Mary is not Zechariah; Mary is the kind of earthly powerless person whom God seeks out, to fight with. Mary contends alongside the angel, not against him – in the model of Eve, the ezer, the warrior who fights with us, who delivers or rescues us when we are in peril. Unlike Zechariah, Eve choses wisely, the holy response to fear, the response trained by the response to fear that is God’s response. Note that the right response is situational: Zechariah and Mary both respond with fight, but that is only the right response for the powerless warrior.

And what of you? What is your go-to response to being afraid? What do you need to unlearn and learn?

 

Advent 2024 : 9

 

If you think God does not experience fear, you have not understood Gethsemane. Jesus, having a good idea of what the power coalitions of Jerusalem will do to him, is terrified. Ah, people tell me, but that is the human part of Jesus. But there is no human part of Jesus, that exists separate from some God part. As the Creed of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria says, of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

‘we believe and confess: that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man;
God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds: and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, born in the world;
Perfect God, and Perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting;
Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood.
Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ;
One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God;
One altogether, not by confusion of Substance: but by unity of Person.
For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man: so God and Man is one Christ.’

Jesus is indivisibly, inseparably God and human. The divine Substance of Jesus and his human Substance, though distinct, are in perfect unity. In his humanity, Jesus offers back to God the life – including the fear – that was God’s own (as we pray at the offertory, ‘of your own do we give to you’).

Centuries before Jesus, we find another man hiding in a garden, Gideon, who is afraid of what Midianite raiders might do, should he fall into their hands. The angel of the Lord – a manifestation of God’s word – appears to him and addresses him as ‘mighty warrior.’ God’s word, of course, is creative: God is calling into being one who will fight those of whom he is, quite reasonably, afraid. The army that gathers to Gideon is too large, and God goes about dispersing it home. Gideon remains afraid, and so God instructs him to sneak into the camp of the very soldiers he fears – a ‘freeze’ act of hiding in plain sight – where he overhears their dismay. T the right moment, light is released, and noise resounds, and the enemy camp is thrown into confusion, turning in on itself. You can read in more detail in Judges 6 & 7.

There are fascinating parallels between the story of Gideon and the Passion narrative that begins with Jesus – and his apprentices – hiding from his enemies in the Garden, where he might hope to remain undiscovered. This is, clearly, his will; and yet he submits to the Father’s wisdom, to the Father’s experience in choosing the right response to threat in any given scenario: flight, fight, freeze, or fawn. And the Father’s wisdom is that this is the moment to fight – which, in God’s mastery is non-violent. So, when soldiers arrive to arrest Jesus, he steps out into the open. The eye-witness John records that the soldiers fall over, as if dead, twice. But Jesus’ apprentices respond in a variety of ways: Peter fights, clumsily, cutting off a man’s ear; most flee the scene (eleven men is too large an army); Peter and another then creep into the very camp of the enemy.

It is not the will of the Father that the Son should die on the cross; nor is it the will of God that anyone should perish. It is the will of God, from before the creation of the world, that, at just the right time, God would become human – and this would transform death from enemy to friend, that cuts us off not from God but from the affliction of sin, for in Christ all human experience is reconciled to God.

It is the will of the Father that the Son should face this particular threat moment in fight, which suggests that he has gathered just the right coalition of the powerless.

 

Advent 2024 : 8

 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

The arm of the Lord is an anthropomorphic understanding of God’s strength. The mountain of the Lord, a physical revelation of God as refuge. The angel of the Lord, a manifestation of God’s word. The fear of the Lord is the manifestation of God’s wisdom in an uncertain world.

More than anything else, the thing God says to human beings is, ‘Do not be afraid.’ In time, we read that perfect love casts out fear. The point is not that those who know God should not be afraid of anyone or anything; but that they do not need to be afraid of God. Over and again, God insists – and acts in ways to back up his claim – that we do not need to be afraid of him.

Fear is a built-in, God-given survival mechanism, one that is grounded in the very nature of God. And God comes to train us in how to live with a sympathetic nervous system.

My children’s generation are the most fearful generation in living memory, though not the first generation in history to be paralysed by fear. But paralysed by fear, they are. And in need of God’s training, in how to be fully human, in a fully divine way, in the world.