Advent IV – Isaiah 9:2, 6 - 20 December 2019

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined…

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace…   (Isaiah 9:2, 6)

(It’s not the reading in the Lectionary – it’s the one I would have prescribed had they asked me.)  One of my earlier Advent lessons came from my mother, who was inclined to call a spade a spade, and was generally underwhelmed by ministers in pulpits all dressed up.  We were walking home from some carol service, and my mother gave a snort of derision at one of the best-known carols of all, one line of which says: But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.  Did you ever hear such silliness, she asked.  If you wanted religion demythologised, it did help to go to church with my mother.  And indeed, in our days as young students demythologising was all the rage.  We thought our faith had to be made intelligible for “the rational mind”.  The years and maturer wisdom say that the truth, the divine Logos, is not something we can ever grasp, possess, own, understand and use.  What we do is bear witness humbly to the Light we see… love, grace, mercy, incarnated, made flesh, in a baby, this child…  


Never a Christmas goes by for me these days without Thomas Hardy’s lovely poem of wistful longing (The Oxen, 1915, after Ypres and Gallipoli…):  

… I feel, if someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come, see the oxen kneel

In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

The humility necessary at Christmas begins back in Advent, as we have seen in all those poetic words of Isaiah, not with answers but with quiet longing – sharing God’s longing it may be -- the lovely German word Sehnsucht… longing, yearning, waiting, for ourselves, for our world.  On Christmas morning what we find is the veil drawn back a little, a glimpse of God... a word from God.  God was in Christ, says Paul.  In another place he says this child is the icon of the invisible God[1].  It is a glimpse of love – before we see anything that might be called powerful or majestic, before we think we have answers now to life’s questions, we have this scene of love and humility and vulnerability.  The point about the Nativity scene is that it needs nothing from us.  There is nothing we can contribute… what did he want with gold, frankincense or myrrh?  Our knowledge, our knowhow, our achievements, our plans, are all set aside.  What we bring is quiet, awed wonder and our longing, loving hearts.

(OUR FRIDAY MORNING CHRISTIAN MEDITATION GROUP IS NOW IN ABEYANCE UNTIL 7 FEBRUARY 2020.)

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[1] II Corinthians 5:19; Colossians 1:15 – “image” in the Greek is icon (ἐικων)

Advent III – Isaiah 35:1-10 - 13 December 2019

The wilderness and the dry land will be glad,

the desert will rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it will blossom abundantly

and rejoice with joy and singing….

Strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those of a fearful heart,

“Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God…”

The eyes of the blind will be opened,

and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame will leap like a deer,

and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

Waters will break forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert…

A highway will be there, it shall be called the Holy Way…

it shall be for God’s people;

no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray…

The ransomed of the Lord shall return

and come to Zion with singing…

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

It’s tempting in Advent to become facetious… and like Oscar Wilde I can resist most things except temptation.  Here we have, for instance, the desert rejoicing with joy and singing… as when my wife comes in from watering the garden to inform me: “The silver beet’s saying thank you.”  Then we get the bit about firming up the feeble knees, which has relevance for some of us.  Then the highway… I don’t know what highways were like in the 8^th century BC, but this one is the highway to Zion, and it will be such a wonderful highway that, says Isaiah, not even fools will go astray… not even tourists in campervans.  Everyone arrives at the temple singing… sorrow and sighing flee away.

There is discovery in faith which may come as a lovely surprise.  It is what one hymn writer calls the joy that seekest me through pain.[1]  There are levels deeper than the pain, and joy is hidden there – although words like “joy” and “rejoicing” may be spoilt I think, through having become religious words.  C S Lewis wrote about being surprised by joy.  Etty Hillesum, on the cattle wagon leaving for Auschwitz, threw a card from the train which read, We left the camp singing.  Though I make my bed in Sheol, wrote the Psalmist, you are there.[2]  For Thomas Merton at a low and restless time it was the liberating discovery of his major handicap: taking himself seriously, the delusion that it was all about Thomas Merton.  And for Karl Barth it was finding Mozart, the divine child in all of us.  Martin Luther was overcome by joy when it dawned on him what St Paul is saying, that we live by faith, by unknowing.  Jesus died, says the writer to the Hebrews, for the joy that was set before him.[3]  What Isaiah sees, his vision, is that all this journeying, all this struggle and setback, ends wondrously:  they shall obtain joy and gladness, sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

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[1] George Matheson: O Love, that wilt not let me go

[2] Psalm 139:8.  Jewish prisoners did celebrate Sabbath Eve, Passover, in Auschwitz.

[3] Hebrews 12:2

Advent II – Isaiah 11:1-9 - 6 December 2019

The readings for Advent II take us to another of the visions, or inspirations, of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem.  He sees a deliverer coming, but not the kind of deliverer one might expect:

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord…

With righteousness he shall judge the poor,

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…

The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

It is a strange picture, like the endearing quaintness of the early medieval pictures of saints and kings – the wolf and the lamb playing together, the calf and the lion… What it depicts is a life without fear.  Children are safe. This theme has been picked up by many, including Franklin D Roosevelt who listed four basic freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.  (It is ironic, then, that the USA is the only country not to have ratified the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child.)  Roosevelt’s list was enshrined in 1948 by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The American artist Norman Rockwell movingly depicted children going off to bed free from fear.  These days it is more the case that we have to teach children danger-savvy, what to be afraid of and how to deal with it. Numerous United States children are taught to feel safe if there are guns in the house (and membership of the local gun club). How do children feel safe in Syria, or in any Kiwi home housing drugs and violence? 


The Christian scriptures convey the insight that it is fear, not hate, which is the opposite of love.  Hate is derivative from fear.  In contemplative life and prayer we tackle fear on deeper levels. What are you afraid of, asks Jesus – why are you afraid?  Love casts out fear, writes John[1]  Love and fear are mutually incompatible.  As fear takes over, love and peace, understanding, retreat.  We are learning, slowly it may be, to lay down the burden of fear so that fear is not ruling our lives, or determining our decisions.  Obviously there are times and situations in which fear is appropriate – we would be silly not to be afraid.  But that is different from a chronic fear of life, being afraid of tomorrow, afraid of difference, afraid of change, needing always first to feel safe…  Once again such a vision seems far out of reach – but it is the way Jesus invites his people to live, and in Advent at any rate we remind ourselves not to lose the vision, and to turn our steps in that direction.

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[1] eg. Matthew 14:27; 17:7; Mark 5:36; John 6:20; I John 4:18; Matthew 6:25-34