The Sunday morning hymn session
on TV1, a few weeks back, featured the much-loved old gospel song, Blessed
Assurance, Jesus is Mine, sung with fervour. And I was left wondering about the awkward
possessive pronoun, “Mine”…? Jesus
arrives as does any new-born, as a stranger, even to his parents. They have to find out who he is… and good
luck to all parents in that task… hopefully they are not assuming their child
is to be some faithful replica of them. But
at a deeper level, in this “Jesus is mine” statement, there is the strong note
of possessing, and from the outset, with Jesus, it seems inappropriate. Jesus is mine…? “Mine” places ME firmly at the centre.. my
faith, my happiness, my spiritual life… That
is not the way the gospel story tells us about all this. There is a persistent note of strangeness in
it from the outset. About the only
accounts of his life until, in Luke’s words, Jesus was about thirty years
old…[1]
are the stories of devout Simeon, and the prophetess Anna… and the very odd
story of how the family went to Jerusalem for the Passover, and returning home they
were a day or so on the road before they realised he wasn’t with them – he was
back in the temple debating with the teachers there. Understanding any of that may indeed be over
to contemplatives like Anna or Simeon… and his mother, we are told, who treasured
these things in her heart.[2]
And onward through his life Jesus is, in
the Latin expression, sui generis, defying classification. He appears, he disappears, his closest
followers constantly misread him… He
defies labelling, and you certainly can’t possess him or domesticate him to
your own personal happiness or your panacea in life.
In contemplative life and prayer
we encounter true mystery as an open door, or perhaps even better if you think
about it, an open window… at any rate not some impediment, or problem to be
solved or explained, or a question to be got to the bottom of. The baby lying there, an utterly dependent
newborn, open to disease or injury, subject to fallible parents… is to the eye
of faith God’s word of love. We don’t
explain this word – we receive this word, in faith and love, in awe and
gratitude. This is, as the Apostle John
puts it, the word made flesh, pitching his tent among us… full of grace and
truth.[3] In good Benedictine fashion, you pause at the
threshold of the stable, and you’re silent…
Paul says this stranger brings a new world: If anyone is in Christ there is a new
creation; the old has passed away; see, everything has become new![4] Our priorities have shifted. We are not thinking and reacting the same any
more. The things Jesus taught seem now
to make a vital sense. We are not so
frightened… of life, of death, of tomorrow, or of others… we can go on about all this, and plenty of
preachers will, but the best gift now is to know how to be still and silent… as
the carol puts it, O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels
sing.
[1]
Luke 3:23
[2] Luke
2:51
[3]
John 1:14. “…lived among us…” The
verb is literally “pitched his tent”, from the Greek verb skēnoō
(σκηνόω) meaning to pitch one’s tent. (Epidemiologists
may be interested that the second-to-last letter of σκηνόω is Omicron... but
perhaps not.)
[4] II
Corinthians 5:17
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