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?