Where's Jesus?

 

Back when I was at theological college, Susie and Noah were in primary school and Elijah was a baby. Once, when Jo was away, I put Elijah in the pushchair and went to collect the other two from school, along with two of their friends, whose dad was also at the college. By the time we got home, it had started to rain. The house we rented had a covered car port that sheltered the side door, so we went in that way. I sorted out drinks for the kids. They disappeared upstairs to play. Some time later, I realised that I didn’t know where Elijah was. I searched the house, every room, without finding him. I went through the house again, even looking in places that, logically, I knew it was impossible that he would be. I asked the others if they knew where Elijah was, and they said “No.” Frustrated, I said, sarcastically, “Well, thanks a lot for helping me look for him.” It was later reported back to the other college family that Susie’s dad had thanked them all for helping look, but that they didn’t think I really meant it. After I had searched the house from top to bottom three times over, I heard a sound from outside the door to the car port. And there I found Elijah, still strapped in the pushchair, exactly where I had left him.

The biographer Luke records a story of Jesus accompanying his parents, Mary and Joseph, on pilgrimage from Nazareth to Jerusalem to take part in the festival of the Passover at the temple, when he was twelve years old. It is a journey that might take three days, possibly more, followed by the seven days of the festival itself. Then everyone sets off for home. At the end of the first day walking home, Mary and Joseph can’t find Jesus. They ask among their relatives, who have made the pilgrimage with them, but no one has seen him: “No, sorry, I thought he was with you.” They ask among the wider group of pilgrims. No one has seen him. No one can recall seeing him all day. By now, mum and dad are more than a little anxious.

There is probably nothing they can do until morning – which doesn’t help – but then they head back to Jerusalem. And then, for three more days they search the city, high and low. They do not find Jesus anywhere. By now, they are besides themselves with worry.

They say the thing you are looking for is always in the last place you look. At one level, that is obvious: once you have found the thing, you stop looking. But there is a sense in which the thing is found in the one place you are most anxious about looking, the place you do not want to go. This is especially true for a missing person.

Eventually, Mary and Joseph find Jesus. He is in the temple. He has been there all along. And Luke tells us:

‘When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them.’

But here is the thing. The Greek text does not say “in my Father’s house.” The word ‘house’ is not there. The Greek says, ‘in the of the Father of me.’ Duplicating the ‘the’ is how they highlight something – we might use bold or italics or underline – and the thing being highlighted is determined by the context. The translators have decided that the context is where Jesus is – the temple – and have given us “my Father’s house.” Because “my Father’s house” is what Jesus calls the temple.

Except that this is a very odd choice. The phrase “my father’s house” is found many times in what we call the Old Testament, and a couple of times in the Apocrypha, and it always means ‘my immediate family or relatives’ and/or what we would call ‘my family tree.’ That is what the phrase means. It would be very strange for Jesus to use it in an entirely different way. In John’s account of the life of Jesus, Jesus is recorded using the phrase on two occasions. Once, he says, “in my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Now, whatever he is speaking of – whether the life to come, or the family of God – he certainly isn’t speaking about the temple here. The other occasion is when he says, “Stop making my Father’s house [or family] a house [or family] of commerce.” This could possibly be the one place where “my Father’s house” could refer to the temple; but even here Jesus could be referring to his family tree, the people of God, and how they were supposed to relate to one another and the surrounding nations.

In any case, ‘house’ is an odd choice to supply as context. There is another word that makes more sense, in context. Mary has just told Jesus, “your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” That is the context. Surely Jesus’ response should be read, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father’s anxiety?” In the anxiety of my father. Or, in other words, didn’t you realise that I would be found in the place where my father was most anxious about finding me?

I don’t know why the temple was the place where Joseph was most anxious about finding Jesus. Perhaps he was worried that he would lose his son, that the apprentice builder of Nazareth would follow a different calling. Perhaps he was worried about where that might lead, where it might end up. Perhaps he was right to worry. Perhaps he couldn’t help it – after all, isn’t that what parents do, even after their children have grown up?

What I do know is that Jesus is to be found in the place where we are most anxious. Wherever that place might be. Whatever those circumstances may be. That is where Jesus is, already, waiting for us to face the fear. For in that place, he is a non-anxious presence. In that place he is listening attentively and asking pertinent questions, desiring to know peace and to draw others into that peace.

So, what are you most anxious about today, right now, in this threshold between 2024 and 2025? Be honest with yourself, as honest as you dare. For that is where Jesus is to be found. In the last place you are prepared to look.

 

Advent 2024 : 24

 

At just the right moment, after centuries of silent, still watching, God responds to his fears of rejection in fawning, embracing ultimate vulnerability before us, coming as an utterly dependent newborn. He will face the wrath of a paranoid king, forcing his family to flee to Alexandria, ironically just as that king himself had done years before. But he will also be met with love, with connection, a mother, father, and community of descendants of David, all hoping for restoration of the covenant friendship their ancestor had enjoyed with God.

And now we find ourselves in the dying days of 2024, and with much to fear as we journey on into 2025. As we meet each situation that (rightly, for our survival) causes us to fear, we must learn again the fear of the Lord, how to fear what God fears and respond to each fear as God does: flight or fight or freeze or fawn. The wrong choice could cost us everything.

The same body that enables us to fear with God enables us to recover, when the fearful moment has passed over us. As we journey into 2025, may we discover healthy patterns of becoming grounded again in our body – our home – when we no longer need to be hyper-vigilant, for the time being. May we learn to inhabit, as David’s son Solomon reminds us, a time to scatter and a time to gather; a time for war and a time for peace; a time to keep silent and a time to speak; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

May our lives grow simpler, and – in an increasingly virtual reality – more embodied, as we walk humbly with our God.

Happy Christmas.

 

Advent 2024 : 23

 

Today the weather broke, and I had reason to be out in it. Water, done now with dancing in the sky, lofty adventures, heeding the call of the ocean: come home! And though my coat kept me dry, I knew (not felt) the cool, dark water on my arms, a sea parting before me as I, too, strode home.

The biographer Luke records a registration to pay tax. The first – that is, the foremost, the most notorious – was when Quirinius was governor of Syria. But that was in 6 CE, when Jesus would have been around twelve years old, paying his first visit to the temple in Jerusalem since he was forty days old. The Roman empire taxed its provinces. It did not tax those territories nominally ruled by client kings; they raised their own taxes, and from them paid tribute to the emperor. In 4 BCE, Herod the Great died, leaving his territory partitioned between three sons in his will. This was contested – it was not his gift to give, but the emperor’s – but Augustus decided largely to uphold Herod’s wishes. But by 6 CE, Augustus had had enough of Herod Archelaus, deposed him, and made Judea and Samaria a Roman province, governed from Syria. This is the point when Quirinius enforces a census for tax purposes, and in so doing he sparks an uprising led by a Galilean. But any census at the time of Jesus’ birth would have been Herodian, perhaps seeking to win back Augustus’ favour, on which his rule depended.

Joseph, who had gone to Nazareth to negotiate marriage to Mary, returned home to Bethlehem. If Herod was following Roman models of taxation, he would tax his people an income tax based on property, and a poll tax based on dependents. So, Joseph returns to his own home (property) to register and takes his wife-to-be (family) with him.

At some point while they are there, she gives birth to a son, her firstborn, who is named Jesus.   The biographer John describes this event as his – Jesus, the Word made flesh – coming to his own. Again, like Joseph and the registration, this is a home coming. To place and to people. To a relationship with a place and a relationship with a people – however those relationships may be stretched by travel and marriage and the decisions of rulers far removed from the lives of ordinary folk.

There is a call that sounds deep within all creation – humans, water (humans are 70% water) and everything else – that calls us home. To God. To ourselves. Let the rain run to the sea. We, too, are homeward bound.

 

Advent 2024 : 22

 

Here in the northern hemisphere, yesterday was the shortest day, last night the longest night. The start of astronomical winter. A third of the way through meteorological winter. The mid-winter point of solar winter. However you choose to define or measure it, we are in winter now. And in acknowledgement, it has turned cold. There is a chill in the air.

These are days to

see with the rods of your eyes and let the cones rest (visual sensation)

savour the exquisite pain of dark chocolate melting on your tongue and teeth (gustatory sensation)

let your ears inhale and exhale the roar of the wind (auditory sensation)

feel the air particles scour your cheeks (tactile sensation)

be led by your nose through a mind palace made of oranges and cloves (olfactory sensation)

and to

hold your loved ones close (proprioception)

be drawn into the deep subconscious rhythms of hibernation (interoception)

reach out into the dark and grasp that you are one with all creation (vestibular sensation)

These are days to come home to your body and dwell a while.

 

Advent 2024 : 21

 

We experience fear – and, when this is acute or prolonged enough, trauma – both in and through our bodies. And we experience recovery from fear – and healing from trauma – both in and through our bodies. That is to say, it is embodied activity, as opposed to thought alone, that brings us to a place of emotional regulation.

Our birth, even if it is free of complications, is the original crisis, the original traumatic experience. When Mary delivered her firstborn son, she wrapped him in swaddling bands, confined him in strips of cloth against his skin, so that he is contained, so that he feels the pressure on his skin and registers safety.

Those of us who are neurodivergent often regulate our emotions through stimming, through repeated movements or micromovement, jiggling a leg or flapping a hand or rubbing a small object between our fingers. For others, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical, it might be knitting. Some forms of attempting emotional regulation are less healthy than others. In my society, alcohol is perhaps the most common form of self-medication, more a numbing than a regulating of emotion. Others, especially if you are middle aged and middle class, run. And/or do yoga or Pilates or go to the gym. Ironically, these things, too, can become an addiction.

I am a runner, an activity that helps to ground me in my body and resists the dominance of my highly active mind. But the winter months are hard for me, for various reasons, and my running fell off a cliff in mid-October. Having run only twice in November, and not much more this month, I went for a run last night. I attempted another, shorter run, this morning (back-to-back runs on a Friday night, Saturday morning, are not unusual for me) but had to bail almost immediately due to a pain in my knee I could not risk ignoring. Now home, I can feel the support holding my knee. And I have pulled on a jumper, slightly tight and with a fleecy lining. It feels like being held. It feels safe.

 

Advent 2024 : 20

 

‘What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.’

Ecclesiastes 3.9-13

‘Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).’

‘When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sin-offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘See, I have come to do your will.’ He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

Hebrews 10.5-10

Your body matters to the God who made it and gave it to you. And it is the will of God that we should experience bodily pleasure, in simple things.

On Tuesday, my son Noah went to the walk-in medical centre. They sent him on to A&E, who eventually told him that he needed to present himself at Day Of Surgery Admissions at 7.30 a.m. the following day, for an operation under general anaesthetic. (He is okay now; this story ends well.)

So on Wednesday I sat with him in Admissions until he was called, but then I had to go back to the church, where a full day of secondary school carol concerts awaited me. And to be honest, my mind was not on the job. I was hyper-alert to events unfolding elsewhere, events I could do nothing about. Keeping an eye on every development. By the time I was finally done with rehearsals, two concerts, and a drinks reception for staff, Noah was safely back home.

By Thursday afternoon, the events of the previous forty-eight hours had caught up with me. My body needed a break from its toil. And Noah’s body needed some gentle movement. He invited me to join him in a walk around our local fishing lakes, and I gladly accepted. Leaving ongoing business behind, we walked, slowly, pausing frequently to watch the swans, the mallards and pintails, the coots and cormorant, a herring gull in its first winter, the moorhens and jackdaws. To feel the cold on our faces.

And it was good.

 

Advent 2024 : 19

 

For five months, Elizabeth keeps her pregnancy secret. This is not confinement – when everybody knows, and social conventions come into play to make room for the expectant mother to prepare and then, for some time after giving birth, bond with her baby. This is concealment – no one can find out, for fear of envy (Mary was not the only woman with fertility issues) or miscarriage. And this meant hiding in plain sight – Elizabeth cannot afford any out of the ordinary action that might betray her condition to her neighbours. She goes about her business, as silent on the matter of her pregnancy as her situationally mute husband.

Five months of carrying a secret, five months of hiding in plain sight (the freeze response to fear) requires a hyper-vigilance that takes its toll on the body. After five months, it is a relief and a release to move, in such a way that your camouflage no longer blends perfectly with the background. To be out in the open, where, in fact, you were all along. Now Mary can come, quickly and purposefully, to her relative. Now Elizabeth can step into a safe space where she can relax. Where she can give to her body the love that it deserves, and her attention fully to the miracle unfolding within.

And what of you? Looking back over the last five months – say to late July 2024 – what secret fear have you carried in your flesh and bones, leaping across synapses and putting muscle fibres under strain? Now may be the time to let go. To pass up on the additional burden of social expectations – of presents to buy and parties to attend and relatives to visit – and to enter into a holy confinement. To return to your own body, as the snow melts into the ground.

To come home.

 

Advent 2024 : 18

 

In the days of Elizabeth, pregnancy and childbirth were conceived as bearing fruit. The fruit of a woman was her children. And Elizabeth is barren. Her life is fruitless. Regardless of the love she shares with Zechariah, regardless of the life they have made together and all the good that has flowed between them and through them to the world around them, she carries within herself the shame of infertility. Shame tells us that we are not worthy of love, not worthy of connection with others. In the dark it grows bigger within us, as does a foetus, ironically. And it keeps our body on edge, alert to the fact that at any moment someone else might discover just how unworthy of love we understand ourselves to be.

When Elizabeth conceives John, she declares that the Lord has taken away the shame she has endured.

The antidote to shame is empathetic connection. Mary sets out, is determined to go to Elizabeth in her confinement. The Lord might have taken away her shame, but in the isolation of confinement – intended as a precious gift of space for the expectant mother – shame might easily return. There are times when solitude is essential, life-giving to the driven soul; but for someone in recovery from shame, isolation can be a killer.

When Mary comes to Elizabeth, there is an immediate connection, between them, between the children in their wombs. Even so, Elizabeth can’t quite see herself as worthy: who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Mary sings a song of revolution, of a changing of the world. A song of those who are nobody in their own eyes being shown honour by God. A song of such people finding solidarity, finding connection, with others like them. These are the conditions in which the body might be cleansed of its shame. And Mary sings this song over Elizabeth before anyone else gets to hear it. And then she stays with her for three months, just to underline the point.

These days approaching Christmas and into the new year, when many step back from their place of work to spend time with loved ones, can be difficult (not only but not least) for those who carry shame (which is pretty much everybody you will ever meet, by the way). How might we be present to one another, in ways that affirm, ‘You are worthy of love and connection’?

 

Advent 2024 : 17

 

At some point in Elizabeth’s third trimester, her relative Mary, in her own first trimester, comes to stay. She will remain with Elizabeth until around the birth of John, and then return home.

The two women laugh; wonder at the unexpected way their lives have turned out; sing revolutionary songs about the overthrowing of the Roman Empire (which itself had not so long ago overthrown the Roman Republic; which in its time had taken control of the Levant, establishing client rulers in Judea [Judea and Idumea] and the Decapolis [Galilee and Samaria] under Syria under Rome).

They probably also orchestrated practical arrangements within Elizabeth and Zechariah’s home. But they undertook no public facing duties. Someone else would have to fetch water from the well. Someone else would have to say their prayers at the synagogue: they would pray in the temple of the home, and commune with God in the Holy of Holies of their wombs, in which the salvation plan of the sovereign Lord was being fleshed out.

Sometimes what the world needs from you is your unavailability.

This Christmas, how might you be more Mary and Elizabeth?

 

Advent 2024 : 16

 

There is a story in the library we know as the Bible about the prophet Elijah. He has managed to make an enemy of the queen, who has called for his assassination.

In fact, Elijah will evade death, not only death by politically motivated murder but death itself, instead being carried up to heaven in a low-swinging chariot pulled by flying horses. Or at least so the story goes. And in the space he left behind a rumour sprung up that one day he would return. Centuries later, Jesus will call John the Baptizer ‘Elijah, who comes [back]’ and like Elijah, John will make an enemy of a queen and, unlike Elijah, be executed and have his head presented at a banquet on a platter. I don’t know what your Christmas table decorations are like, but you’d have to go a long way to top that.

Anyway, Elijah. Elijah flees into the wilderness, until exhaustion – as when adrenalin spikes and crashes – catches up with him, and he sleeps. But after a while, an angel, a messenger sent by God, wakes him, having prepared him food to eat. Once Elijah has eaten, he is encouraged to sleep once more, and then woken again to eat another meal. For he must continue on his journey into the wilderness, to meet with God, and he will need the gifts of sleep and of food to sustain him.

Chances are high that the government does not have a price on your head. But chances are also high that you may be in danger of losing your head, at least metaphorically, and if not now at some point. And for many, the additional expectations around Christmas – including special, celebratory, meals to plan, prepare, and eat – can prove burdensome. Wearying.

You were not made for this. Food is given to nourish and sustain us, not only within our bodies but in the connections between our bodies, the social space which holds at least some of our memory. And when you can eat in a celebratory fashion, do. Whether that is on the 25 of December, or some random Thursday in July. But when it is too much, be gentle with yourself. Be kind, and gracious, generous, hospitable to the weary guest who is yourself besides yourself with overwhelm. Make room for one another, including, if you can, those who need a little more than beans on toast. Within family dynamics, this can require a lot of give and take. May God give you the grace to give what you can and take what you need.

 

Advent 2024 : 15

 

The Church of England’s theme for Christmas this year is Calm and Bright, words taken from the carol Silent Night. Calmness and brightness are images that belong with the parasympathetic nervous system that is meant to kick in when present danger is past. They are associated with the hormone oxytocin, which plays a part in protecting the new mother’s body from excessive bleeding, in the stimulation of milk production, and in the social bonding of mother and child. And because every person is different, every birth has its own unique experience of oxytocin, of calmness and brightness welling up or somehow being quenched.

But these feelings, that may be experienced by the body, are also experienced by the mind. In the aftermath of childbirth and having been visited by the shepherds with their tales of an angel army proclaiming peace, Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. Whereas the treasure that had been held in her womb had now been brought out for the world to see, Mary builds up a new treasure in the warm darkness of another inner chamber. She will return to them many times over the years to come, and not least in times of external and cold darkness. Fleeing to Alexandria. Standing at the foot of the cross. In times when anxiety rises within her, she will quell the storm. And also, in times of joy. In the family home at Nazareth. At a wedding in Cana.

Calm is a regulation of our emotions, such that we can ride the waves, neither tossed about by crashing breakers nor stuck in a doldrum. And we can adopt practices that grow our ability for calm, as non-anxious people.

This morning, I sat in the darkness with Mary, allowing my eyes to grow accustomed to the light – for there is light, even in darkness – and breathing slowly and deeply. Just for a few short minutes, before moving into my day.

What practices help you to be calm and bright?

 

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.