My Heart Is Now Become An Ark
In the past
God gave instruction to his people
to build an ark
out of acacia wood
covered with purest gold inside and out
and overshadowed by
gold cherubim.
Within the ark were placed those
treasured mementos
of God’s presence,
and so it served as promise
that in all the days ahead
God would meet with his people
at the ark.
My heart is now become an ark
of a renewed covenant.
Exodus 25:10-22
Exodus 37:1-9
Luke 2:8-20
O Emmanuel
When he comes
I shall be completely undone;
undone, undone,
and made complete.
The life that always was
of God’s great plan,
hidden within for now –
constrained by my weak flesh –
shall then be birthed
for all to see,
on that great day
on that great day
on that great
and terrible Day.
O Emmanuel
O Emmanuel, our King and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.
O Rex Gentium
One day, out of the blue
a caravan of travellers came to town,
exotic in their clothes and tongue.
They came in from the west –
the road of dreams –
but pitched their tents towards the east,
to indicate they came in peace,
as father Abraham himself had done.
They set up camp, and all the while
the eyes of every Bethlehem child
held every move: our sentinels.
All, except one: my son.
Like any boy his age, he did not lack
boldness of heart, inquiring eye...
but nonetheless,
he looked up from the dust
in which he drew –
unfolding stories with a sweep –
and then turned back
to his own occupation. Sure enough,
when they were ready,
they came to him.
They next day, they were gone again,
as suddenly as they had come;
off on their onward journeying,
in search of precious hope
and rising faith
and costly love.
O Rex Gentium
O King of the Nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which you fashioned from clay.
O Oriens
O you planets, on your sure
Orbits – set at his command – now
rolling into rare alignment;
in unison proclaim the news
entrusted to your care:
now is the time: earth’s
saviour is revealed!
O Oriens
O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.
O Clavis David
Christ is the Key
that opens every door:
that unlocks bound-up heaven
that unlocks bound-up hell;
that overturns our fear with love
our enmity with friendship
our boastful pride with quiet modesty
our riches with emptiness
our emptiness with riches.
Christ is the Key
that opens every door:
that unlocks bound-up earth
that unlocks bound-up heaven;
that overturns our rule with grace
our wounds with healing balm
our brokenness with noble company
our dignity with troubled minds
our troubled minds with dignity.
Christ is the Key.
By the time John comes to write his Gospel, at the end of his long life, he has come to understand that Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Later still, the Church comes to articulate the Doctrine of the Trinity. I believe that it was the Holy Spirit that led them to these points. But I also believe that it is anachronistic to think that Mary understood Gabriel’s message (Luke 1:26-38), that her son would be known as the Son of the Most High and the Son of God, to mean that she would give birth to the Second Person of the Trinity. This description – without any claim to divinity – was ascribed to king David; and Mary would have understood the angel’s message as God’s intent to restore David’s kingdom.
This raises a problem for Mary: she is a virgin. Her question – How will this be? – ought not to be understood as a question of mechanics (how can I become pregnant? – news that a bride will become a mother is not unusual) but of significance: how can a virgin giving birth to a son signify the restoration of David’s kingdom, when the Scriptural precedent is that a virgin giving birth to a son signifies that the Davidic line of kings is soon to come to an end? (Isaiah 7 – and, indeed, the following several chapters – read far enough, and you’ll come across yesterday’s Root of Jesse. In the immediate, the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed, while the southern kingdom of Judah was besieged but delivered: it was, however, to be the Beginning of the End.) (Here I am not denying the traditional Doctrine of the Virgin Birth, but rather denying the unscriptural belief that it signifies something unique, without precedent.)
Likewise, Gabriel’s response is not concerned with mechanics (how God will do this – Scripture is rarely if ever concerned with how God does things, which is why faith and science are not incompatible but complementary) but with significance: what previously symbolised God giving his people over into the hands of their enemies will be reversed because God’s presence is about to return to his people, and his protective presence will cover them. As in Isaiah’s time, the people are about to be destroyed. Yet in this moment of crisis, God will reverse the fortunes of the people, bringing down false rulers and raising up the humble (as Mary recognises in her song of praise, Luke 1:46-55).
So God is about to do something which will restore a Davidic king on David’s throne. And here is why it is important that we understand Son of God to refer to Son of (his father) David, and not jump straight to Second Person of the Trinity: David is king for many years before he takes up his throne; years spent hidden in a cave, while those broken by Saul’s mad reign are drawn to him and find themselves formed into a community of Mighty men and women. This is the significance, as in Advent we look to Christ’s return, to his taking his throne: that Mary’s son, the hidden king, receives the broken and confers upon them dignity and purpose, still.
O Clavis David
O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
O Radix Jesse
When God came into the world,
it was as one entrusted not to kings
or priests or generals
but to a carpenter:
to one who knew not how to rule,
or broker rites, or break resistance,
but one who knew the life of
trees -
which one to choose,
to trust, for every purpose.
One whose trained eye could tell
what lay beneath outward appearance,
whose skill could fashion habitable space
for saint and sinner, Jew and Gentile.
From the beginning
God had known
this was the call
to which he must apprentice.
The very act of human living involves the repeated discipline of receiving life and letting-go of death, as we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. In God’s breath-taking vision, trees take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen: an exchange that calls on us to shepherd trees well, and, as long as the mutual interdependence of all creation is honoured, guarantees that we are not consumed.
One of the ancient images of Jesus is the Root of Jesse. As a tree cut back will grow again if its roots remain, so Jesus is the re-growth of David’s family line (Jesse was David’s father; David, king of Israel; and David’s line cut off at the Exile – defeat and a series of exiles and later returns – under the Babylonian empire).
But there is more to the image of Jesus as tree than that: echoes of the Tree of Life, and of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (knowing right from wrong); echoes of the ark in which survival was secured in the days of a Great Flooding of the Cradle of Humanity...and of the ark of the Covenant, symbol and sign of God’s presence with his people; echoes also of the crucifixion, and of the exchange where God takes on himself the sin (the death that exists when we live in disharmony) of humanity, in so doing destroying sin, and extends his own righteousness (the life that exists when we live in harmony) to us.
O Radix Jesse
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign to the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
O Adonai
He falls, arms outstretched,
at my feet. His eyes meet mine,
imploring me to lift him up
and hold him in my arms;
my heart is in my mouth, again.
He runs, arms outstretched,
to my side. His eyes meet mine,
imploring me to lift him up
and hold him in my arms;
my heart is in my mouth, again.
He dances, arms outstretched,
before the fire. My eyes meet his,
inviting him to lift me up
and hold me in his arms;
my heart is in my mouth, again.
He hangs, arms outstretched,
from a tree. His eyes meet mine,
imploring me to lift him down
and hold him in my arms;
my heart is in my mouth, again.
Exodus 3
O Adonai
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.
O Sapientia
This child is relentless
in his love for the world,
always asking questions,
seeking understanding –
the most amazing questions;
as if he sees his fingerprints
in everything around
and wants to know,
from sun and rock and leaf and calf,
from ant and hyrax,
locust, lizard...
Do you see, too?
Proverbs 30:24-28
O Sapientia
O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago
in a land far away lived an old man and an old woman.
Life had not been bad to them, exactly,
but in their hearts each nursed a secret sorrow.
Day after day after day, the old man looked out
across the wilderness and wept as he called by name
the sons and daughters never born to them.
Night after night after night, he looked out
into the dark sky and called to mind
life-moments that had never come to pass.
One evening, as day gave way to night,
God visited the man and said
Look again at the wilderness
Look again at the night sky
Look closer than before: what do you see?
Beauty in the wilderness, beauty in the night sky.
And God said, So shall your descendents be:
more numerous than the crystal-grains of sand
more numerous than the diamond-glittering stars
formed in great pillars
formed in great constellations
marks and signs for all those who would make their way
through this uncertain world,
giving direction, sustaining hope.
So shall your descendents be.
This, then, is why we are the ones
called to Rejoice!
For we look closer-than and see
For we look farther-than and see
God, the Creator and Sustainer and friend
has not left us on our own:
tomorrow he comes!
Today is Gaudete (Rejoice!) Sunday. Rejoice, because light is breaking into darkness (Isaiah 9); because rain is coming to transform the wilderness (Isaiah 35). Not in denial of the darkness and the wilderness in our world - in our lives - but in the certain hope that by his coming among us (Advent), God transforms our communities. Today we light a pink candle to mourn with those who mourn and, simultaneously, rejoice with those who rejoice.
Tomorrow marks the start of the Advent Antiphons, ancient Christian prayers that run between 17 December and Christmas Eve, and spell-out, in secret code, the message: TOMORROW HE COMES!
The Massacre Of The Innocents
When they came
and cut our children down
before our eyes
we realised:
this was not the
foreigner intent
on crushing us into submission;
these men were of our own,
our flesh and
blood.
It was not evil –
in some projected-outward sense –
that visited our quiet town
that day; it was
the dark and fearful side of
who we are.
And where was
God With US
in this? He’d slipped
across the border,
gone away,
to be among our enemies
until we turned
away from fear, humbled ourselves –
for only then could he return.
How long, O Lord?
Deliver us from evil.
Deliver us from
US.
You can read about the massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2.
The First Word And The Last
Words don’t exist
in splendid isolation:
all words become
within the world.
Vaults and spans
become cathedrals,
joined by so many
words they gather
in a chapter.
Envy and hate;
faith, hope and love:
all become action.
All words become.
The Word
from whose utterance
all other words
act or react,
the Word became...
flesh
and, without words,
said hold me close –
and as I grow,
what might become?
Take, Eat
What is the taste of motherhood
if not meals half-abandoned
left to go cold, while she attends her child?
What is the taste of motherhood
if not a meal eaten in haste, left on the table
as her brood is gathered-up and bundled out the door?
What is the taste of motherhood
if not exodus? For motherhood reflects
the Mother-heart of God.
Aroma
Very early in the morning
of that first day,
while it was still dark –
though the cockerel knew
the light was coming into the world –
the women took charcoal
and set a fire beneath the iron dome
on which they baked flat bread;
took oil and flour and
kneaded them together,
inseparable;
and stood about –
under the cockerels bright gaze –
as the aroma of fresh loaves
and pungent smoke
rose in the House of Bread.
Their conversation darts about like sparrows,
swoops low –
How will this end? A child born under occupying might –
then glances off –
With every birth, hope draws first breath again
and fills its lungs with life.
The cockerel throws his proud head back
in praise and, young and old,
each woman in her heart decides
whatever good and evil is to come,
entwined, they own this son
as theirs.
There are two references to charcoal fires in the Gospels: the fire at which Peter vehemently denied knowing Jesus on the night of his trial, before the cockerel crowed to mark the dawn of the day of crucifixion; and the fire at which the resurrected Jesus makes breakfast as the first act of repairing their friendship.
Jesus’ mother, with other women, went to his tomb on the first day of the week, but found it empty and were informed by an angel that he had risen. Also present at the cross, the women among Jesus’ followers are consistently portrayed in the Gospels as being faithful, in contrast to the fickle men. This is not to say that the women did not need correcting at times. Once, Jesus’ family – his mother, sisters and brothers – came to take charge of him. Jesus responded by redefining and extending his family – mother, sisters, brothers – as those who shared with him in doing the will of his, and their, heavenly Father.
Bethlehem: in Hebrew, House of Bread (and in Arabic, House of Meat).
Dare to Believe
Sing, choirs of angels:
set air and earth alike aquiver
with your song
that holds us closer than ourselves
and rocks our fitful, restless sleep
to deep, rejuvenating rest.
A lullaby for all the earth:
peace now,
Peace Be With You
today, today
and each tomorrow.
Sing, choirs of angels!
Depth Of Field
Light breaks in –
sharp like a cry –
between the shutter-boards
and throws itself across the floor,
bleeds as it falls,
leaks into air and on to stone.
These walls, the room between
their frame, swim into focus:
a scene becoming more familiar
day by day. This is our home,
for now; though not
the home we left behind.
These are my people now,
moving so carefully around me;
they try too hard not to disturb me – say,
“Leave them to sleep; they’ll stir themselves,
and soon enough, God knows.”
So studied are they in respectful distance
that I watch, unseen.
There is so much I must take in.
Well-worn
And did those feet in from ancient time
booted against the snow
set out to carry bales of hay
up to the pasture feeding rack
and then run back across uneven fields;
run to the church and climb the steps
up to the ringing chamber
to wake the world
and call us all to worship?
Unfurl
Unfurl your wings
and sing
Unfurl your cloaks
and run to pass it on
Unfurl your swaddled child
and, skin-on-skin,
heaven touches earth
heaven touches earth
heaven touches earth
Perspective
The lines converge at the horizon:
the wandering son returning home
the bride, the groom
rough shepherd boys
their heritage concealed
by night
heralds of heaven.
The lines converge at the horizon:
a rim of light
throws all the world into relief.
The Manger
What is the human being,
to deserve such favour?
The Lord took hard, compacted earth
and hollowed-out a shallow imprint,
a vessel, that the cattle might be fed.
Empty, a manger is no more
than an uneven footing
for the blind.
This is the sign: the glory of
the Lord rests once again
within its imprint,
and all will be well.
Chrysalis
Beneath the canopy of heaven
unprotected, true heirs
of kings and sometime prophets
faithful, keep suspended watch.
Hidden from those who trust
in wood and stone,
they rest where father Jacob’s
angel-ladder touches earth.
The air is thick and shimmers
with a singing weight,
encounters down the ages across realms;
yet, even so, the messenger of
glory and of peace
elicits fear: for shepherds know
that none can bear the news
for which they wait, and long to hear.
Nevertheless, the time has come
to shed the shepherd-skin,
as Shepherds, blinking,
push their way into the light.
Biblical references to shepherds: the Patriarchs, King David, the prophet Amos, God himself.
