Advent 2024 : 3

 

Yesterday, I landed by asking the questions: What would God flee from? And to whom would God flee?

My contention is that humans, along with other mammals, have bodies that, thanks to our sympathetic nervous system, equip us to respond to uncertainty and potential danger by means of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behaviours.

And that, in this, we reflect and reveal the nature of the Creator God in whose likeness creation shares, and humans particularly.

I want to suggest that there are both holy and unholy ways in which we can express fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behaviours. Which – given that our starting point was the respective flights of Herod and of Jesus to Egypt – raises the questions: What would God flee from? And to whom would God flee?

Deep in the library known to us as the Bible, we find a book that records the glory of God lifting from the Temple in Jerusalem and departing into the wilderness to the east of the rift valley that separates Europe and Africa from Asia. The divine glory has gone in search of his people, whom he has already allowed to be carried off into exile in Babylon.

I want to suggest that God is fleeing home (or, at least, his primary earthly address). That God is not going on holiday, or a business trip, but that he has carefully planned to flee a home where something has gone very wrong. That God is fleeing the concentration of power – because power, concentrated by those who seek to exercise it over others, corrupts even the best of intentions. And that God flees to those who find themselves displaced from the centre, relatively powerless – in the sense that their ability to exercise power over others is curtailed – in hope of finding those who might be willing to form a partnership of the limited, the vulnerable.

My own church tradition, the Church of England, would do well to reflect on this.

Whereas Herod flees to Alexandria in hope of building a coalition of the powerful, God flees to a people living in exile. As the Father flees to those living in exile in Babylon, so the Son flees to those living in diaspora in Alexandria.

Flight is a human response to danger. The choice is whether to pattern our flight to the ways of God, or in opposition to God’s ways.

But flight is not the only response to danger. How, and whom, does God fight?

 

Advent 2024 : 2

 

I am fascinated by the common ground found between Herod the Great and Jesus in their respective flights to Egypt (see yesterday). In keeping with other mammals, humans have a sympathetic nervous system that enables us to respond to potential danger with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behaviour. Herod and Jesus share their humanity, as well as, in Herod’s action against Jesus, our capacity for inhumanity. Moreover, there is a long biblical record of flight from danger: Moses flees Egypt, later returning to lead his people in their own communal flight; David flees the wrath of Saul; Paul will escape Damascus lowered down the city wall hidden in a basket.

But it goes deeper than this. For Jesus is not only God, fully human, but also human, fully divine. Jesus reveals the nature of God to us, even as he participates in the life of God.

To be human is to be limited – by our bodies, by the actions of others for or against us – and to be invited to embrace our limitations. Limited, not because we are creatures, in contrast to a limitless Creator, but precisely because we are formed in the likeness of a Creator who, from the beginning, embraced and continues to embrace limitations. To acknowledge and embrace our limited nature is the most divine expression of being human possible.

The flight response we see in humans and other mammals reflects and reveals something of the nature of God. But what would God flee from? And to whom would God flee?

 

Advent 2024 : 1

 

At this time of year, I mobilise friends to deliver Christmas cards to every household in the parish. This year, the card features an image of a mother and her child fleeing their home by night, The Flight to Egypt.

Several decades before the birth of Jesus, an Idumean nobleman fled to Alexandria, by ship, by night. A convert to Judaism, Herod had first been appointed provincial governor of Galilee, and later Galilee and Samaria, by the Romans, who ruled the territory indirectly. His older brother, Phasael, held the equivalent position in Jerusalem. It helped that their father was a friend of Julius Ceasar. After Caesar’s assassination, Mark Anthony named them both tetrarchs, under Hyrcanus II, but Hyrcanus’ nephew usurped the throne. Herod, who had sent his first wife and son into exile – common enough behaviour for rulers – and married Hyrcanus IIs granddaughter, Mariamne, fled to Alexandria seeking help. They travelled by ship, guided by the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. A light shining in the darkness. Herod hoped to enlist the support of Cleopatra VII, former lover of Julius Ceasar and now wife of Mark Anthony. Cleopatra welcomed him and offered him an army, to serve her as general in territories that had been ruled over by her family, the Ptolemaic dynasty, since lost, and that she hoped to regain. But Herod’s ambitions were greater; he departed Alexandria for Rome, where he was declared sole king over Judea by the Senate.

Almost immediately, his rule faced a threat from his mother-in-law, who wrote to Cleopatra – one mother and powerful woman to another – requesting that her son be made High Priest. Considering this a power play against him, Herod had the young man assassinated. His mother-in-law again appealed to Cleopatra, for justice; and the Queen of Egypt (who now had reason to see Herod as an enemy, and not an ally) sent her Roman husband to bring Herod to trial. Herod evaded consequences by siding with Anthony in his quarrel with Octavian – though when Octavian defeated Anthony to become the first emperor, Augustus, Herod would find himself needing to twist and turn again to survive.

Several decades after Hero’s flight to Egypt, Joseph, a descendant of King David but himself an artisan, would flee to Egypt to escape the paranoid wrath of Herod – now styling himself The Great. The family fled by night, perhaps, like Herod before them, travelling by ship, guided by the Pharos. Seeking a welcome among the large community of Jewish merchants and artisans, philosophers and scholars, who made up a large part of the population of Alexandria. Somewhere a builder could find work and fashion a home for his family. Not a forever home, perhaps, but a safe haven in stormy season.

It is striking how the lives of those we consider our enemies and a threat to our way of life parallel our own lives and experience so closely.

Advent Sunday

 

Advent is the Season of Preparation, of getting ready, not, primarily, to celebrate Christmas, but to get in shape for Jesus’ return, at some unknown future point. Because – like him – we have a body, it is in our bodies that we get ready. There are parallels here with intentionally doing exercises that strengthen your core in middle age, so that you might have greater mobility in an older age that as yet lies over the horizon. Advent is working on our core so that, when Christ comes again, we might be able to put on our own socks and shoes and follow him. And this year, the theme chosen by the Church of England for Advent is Calm & Bright.

Your body has a sympathetic nervous system, which helps keep us alive. The base of our brain scans for danger, and, through the release of certain hormones, our body prepares to respond. Are we strong enough to defend ourselves? Fight. Are we fast enough to outrun the danger? Flight. Is it better to remain as silent and still as possible, in the hope we will go unnoticed? Freeze. Or is our best chance the calculated risk of submission? Fawn.

The sympathetic nervous system helps keep us alive, but it takes its toll on our body. Once the immediate danger is past, we need to return to a state of calm. This is where our parasympathetic nervous system comes in, releasing other hormones that do just that. This also helps keep us alive, as a species, by enabling us to enjoy eating and experience sexual pleasure, and is sometimes referred to as Rest & Digest, or Feed & Breed.

But our sympathetic nervous system can be tricked into being permanently switched on. The base of our brain cannot tell the difference between your living in a building that is being shelled, and you watching a constant stream of images of buildings in another part of the world that are being shelled. And when our body is continually on high alert, we will experience migraines, or irritable bowels, or skin conditions.

The digitally saturated world we live in is especially bad in this regard. So, we try to fight back by tricking our parasympathetic nervous system into calming us. Again, we might turn to digital hits of affirmation. But the relaxing hormones have less and less impact, the more we force them.

None of this is new. In the threat-laden world of the first century, Paul wrote of experiencing joy and love – and cardio exercise – in an unstable context. His sometime travel companion, Luke, recorded Jesus also speaking of cardio exercise in contrast to numbing oneself, throughdrunkenness and dissipation, in the face of times of great and prolongeddistress.

The people of faith have always embraced disciplines that prepare themselves both for danger and for return to calm. This Advent, we are invited to discover, again, some of those calming practices. It is unlikely that the return of Jesus – a cataclysmic event – is about to take place. How can we remain fit and well as we wait?

Get outside, in nature, and go for a walk. Or get your hands dirty in the soil. Write in a journal, or a letter to a friend, or spend time with companions. Read a novel, play a game, or do a jigsaw. Meditate on the Psalms, or memorise a prayer, or receive Communion regularly. Stroke the ears of a pet. Sit and breathe deeply for five minutes, attending to your breath. Light candles. Listen to music. Appreciate architecture. Greet a stranger passing by on the street. All these and more are spiritual exercises for your body, enabling you to know joy and love. And in a world of distress – a stressed world – to return to calm is an act of resistance, of hope, of the world-to-come breaking into the present world.

This Advent, take time for such things.