Behold!

"I would not have you contemplate the deity of Christ, the majesty of Christ, but rather his flesh. Look upon the Baby Jesus. Divinity may terrify man. Inexpressible majesty will crush him. That is why Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm.

Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother, still a virgin. What can be sweeter than the Babe, what more lovely than the mother! What fairer than her youth! What more gracious than her virginity! Look at the Child, knowing nothing. Yet all that is belongs to him, that your conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. Watch him springing in the lap of the maiden. Laugh with him. Look upon this Lord of Peace and your spirit will be at peace. See how God invites you in many ways. He places before you a Babe with whom you may take refuge. You cannot fear him, for nothing is more appealing to man than a babe. Are you affrighted? Then come to him, lying in the lap of the fairest and sweetest maid. You will see how great is the divine goodness, which seeks above all else that you should not despair. Trust him! Trust him! Here is the Child in whom is salvation. To me there is no grater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort? Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if you come to this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge you, but to save". Martin Luther on the Nativity (Christmas Sermons).

Gift-wrap. It's used by the store-load this time of year, but have you ever thought about why we find it so important to use it?
What is it that requires us to take up our time and make so much effort to insure that all those goodies we buy for others is so nicely (in my case, not so much - I'm pretty dreadful with paper and tape) wrapped?

It's all about marking something as special.
When we hand over that little box of something in that brightly colored sheet, it says 'here's something to say you're special', and because of that we (usually) know a moment of delight: an affirmation that we are loved.

Christmas is a moment when we can look with amazement upon the most beautiful and total gift that has ever been given.
The one whom the Apostle John describes as 'The Word' - the one who makes all things and holds them together - is 'gift wrapped' to come amongst us.
Now it's important to reflect on this, because it says something wonderful about the handiwork of God.

The Lord does not come amongst us as some strange, extra-terrestrial like creature, or as an "Angel", just to proclaim a message and go. Christ is given to us flesh and blood - to live like us, to encounter first hand all the pain, frustration, fear and futility that define our lives in a fallen world.
The gift the world received at Christmas is truly miraculous.

What always astonishes me is how so much of the time, we want to 'wrap' God up in some other way - we want to make Him remote or distant, strange and aloof; a being far, far away in some remote spot we tag 'heaven' - certainly not a naked child feeding at a bare human breast!
The truth that Christianity conveys is that human redemption is that real.
It was a real child that came to rescue us, a real man that walked and lived amongst us, attending our weddings and feasts, our funerals and days of illness. It was this man who was to be crucified upon a Roman Cross, buried and then - raised from death, truly alive!

Amidst all the usual things that happen this Christmas, take a moment to reflect on the greatest gift that God wants us to unwrap -
that we can have life through the love and salvation provided to us in His only Son.

God is with us, and that makes life here hallowed indeed!

T h e M e d i a t o r

“No material thing is strong enough to bear the burden of the world. But the everlasting Word [logos] of the eternal God is the firmest and surest support of the whole. He stretches to reach from the middle to the edges and from the heights to the middle, uniting and binding all the parts with nature's unfailing course. For the Father who begot Him made Him the unbreakable bond of all".

Philo of Alexandria.

So what's it really about then?

Spending too much. Eating too much. Totally forgotten nights at New Year's because of way to much drink?

It's all just a jumble of old traditions - mistletoe and mince pies, Santa and carols. The 'religious' bits are unnecessary - irrelevant really. Family and friends and "happy" moments - that's what it's actually all about.

The contemporary Christmas certainly wants to substantiate a new myth - that Christianity's 'idea' of us being visited by God Himself was some kind of much later invention - Jesus really wasn't important in that way - just a nice guy to think about now and then, a little like father Christmas!

It's a lie that is quickly (and rightly) binned in a few moments.

A century before the nativity, the Jewish scholar Philo wrote the above words, echoing something which had been recognized in Judaism from the days of Moses and earlier - the issue of the 'mystery' of the persons of Elohim (the Lord God), touched upon so clearly in the passages of the Old Testament (Isaiah 44:6).

Within the very first days of the church beginning to proclaim Jesus as Lord (supreme authority), it was clear that such statements and hymns spoke of such Lordship being expressed in Christ's life, death and resurrection (Philippians 2:5-11) and that this therefore became the source of our understanding of the nearness and purpose of God - to draw close to us that we might touch and see His goodness and intent; to rescue us from darkness by His love.

The very 'Word', which both Paul and Philo remind us holds all things together to do the Father's will, came amongst us - that is the intent of the season, to reflect upon how the one who perfectly reflects and conveys the astonishing fellowship and nature of God came to us, lost souls that we are, that we might touch, might see the reality of God's love.

History and revelation bear witness to this truly supernatural fact - a truth which should season our days here with a sense of what, thankfully, truly resides beyond the often pantomime-like 'festivities' that parade as Christmas.

"God of God, Light of Light, Lo He abhors not the Virgin's womb,

Very God, begotten not created,

Oh come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord".

The Joy

"Seeing, then, we are surrounded by this great company of witnesses,
let us lay aside every hindrance - the sins which like heavy garments, cling to us,
so we can run, free and well, on the course before us,
looking to Jesus, the originator and the finisher of our faith,
who, for the joy which was set before Him, endured the cross".

Hebrews 12:1 & 2.

Life - it's both amazing and terrifying.
In a few hours, you can read of some amazing discovery, and some dreadful deed, almost on a daily basis. Our reality is literally staggering.

Sometimes we can get pretty overwhelmed by the trail of such an existence. Life can certainly be hard when the trials become something that directly impact upon us, leaving us wondering if there is really any purpose or design in a world where you can literally be joyful one moment and in misery the next.

In the night before His death, Jesus sought to show and teach His disciples that even in the midst of such moments, life does have eternal significance; that beyond our few frail moments here and now, there is something far more substantial coming, and that sharing life together in the reality of that hope helps us to prepare for what is to come.

Like the runner engaged in preparing to get ready for the big event, there are going to be many moments when the pain and trails seem overwhelming, but the trails which engulf us are not the conclusion to this moment - there is one who stands with us, one who liberates us from the shackles of our own decay, who makes running this race to the end possible!

Jesus Christ went to the cross because He foresaw the prize which was ahead - and that 'seeing' had begun in the very first moments, when Father, Son and Spirit determined to fashion the heavens and the earth.

"Creation anticipates a telos...The God who freely, graciously and powerfully rules has a goal - the new creation, in His Son, Jesus Christ (Galatians 6:15). Even though we await the full revelation of the new, God assures us of His covenant care for all of creation in general and His children in particular" (Willem Van Gemeren - The Progress of Redemption).

There will be an terminus to the alienation we know, and that day will see something truly marvelous - the creation heavy with the glory of God, woven with the fragrance of His redemption.
We can run, like the unclad athletes of old, not because of our capacity, but because He runs with us, He has claimed the prize, and He will herald the day when it is shared with those that He has so graciously and mercifully set free.

What a day is coming!

The Calling

"It is the mark of a good story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however . .. terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears".

J R R Tolkein

In art and life, noted C S Lewis, we are always trying to glean from successive moments something beyond those moments. Children who relish the opportunity to hear a story over and over again understand this, that it is the 'quality' of something unexpected, not the fact of it, which truly delights us. Like Tom hearing the clock strike thirteen (Tom's midnight garden), we know that such a point opens a window to something astonishing, something which deeply resonates with our 'sense of wonder' and meaning with regards to existence.

This week saw the release of some research into our reality that takes us 'beyond the moment'.

Andrew Sibley at the Uncommon Descent blog reports:

Researchers from Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind have found evidence that children are predisposed to believe in God or a supreme being. This is because of a natural assumption that everything in the world exists for a purpose and was therefore created.

Dr Justin Barrett was reported in the UKs Daily Telegraph as saying that young children appear to have an inherent faith even when it has not been taught to them by family or school. Even children raised on a desert island without any external influence would start out with a belief in God.

Commenting on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said

“The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children’s minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose…if we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God.”

We have lived through a time when there has indeed been much "surprise" - where the developing image of our universe is not of a place which chaos and chance have thrown together to remain remote and transient, where life is a mere spark that will simply die. Life, in all it's balance and complexity, is here by design - and it is the quality of this truth which urges us to return to the true source of life and wisdom, the one Paul describes as 'made plain' by what we know and understand (Romans 1).

Christmas is a time which invites us, like the children in a nativity play, to learn still more about the 'quality' of such a surprise - that the very wisdom and nature of God is not merely something remotely observed in our studies via microscope or telescope, or even something we all deeply recognize for our earliest days - it is a reality that was 'made flesh' amongst us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The great 'story' that we are all a part of, is imbued with a marvelous reality - there is a conclusion to this saga that brings eternal purpose, if we but open our eyes and like a child, step into a deeper world.

POISON!

"The body was created as an inseparable part of what makes us human...
We don't just have a body - we are bodily....
The good news is that, in spite of death, the body will be re-united in all its goodness and splendor one day...
Sexual organs, which God created and clearly included in His pronouncement "Good", we now refer to as 'naughty' (or worse)".

Michael Horton.

Sometimes, you read something, like the above, which makes you want to shout "YES!" with your whole being, and sometimes, you read something which hits you right between the eyes, and makes you realize just how impoverished we can make ourselves when we miss 'joining the dots' to unpack the true ramifications of our redemption. Today was certainly a latter encounter.

For several years, I've been receiving and on occasion writing for the excellent Fig Leaf Forum - a regular newsletter for Christian Naturist's. Now I know that the practice itself raises eyebrows amongst many (those who want to know more as to why it shouldn't , please get in touch), but the inherent and underlying supposition of the practice regarding the nature of the body is something ALL Christians need to understand, which brings me back to today.

This month's forum contained an article on the issue of the nature of shame, especially body shame, and how we as believers can so easily miss the necessary understanding of this and end up in a cul-de-sac of mistaken identity - where we have ill-defined what modesty and piety are and thereby totally missed the inherent nature of godliness.

The piece makes you look forward - to the bodily life that is coming - so that we can properly evaluate where we are right now, and what actually occurred in the fall. It's when we make this study that we are so pointedly reminded that shame (something we've all known) is a consequence of sin (severance from the genuine reality of Creation, both in the Beginning and in the coming renewal).
Now, it's imperative we understand this, because it's so easy to confuse shame with modesty, and then become a casualty of a mis-placed 'holiness' - outward dos and don'ts we believe are correct, but are seriously flawed.

When we look at the Biblical perspective, we see that humanity, male and female, naked and unashamed, is the definition of what is 'very good', but, we continue, those days are gone, so we reason, fallen beings that we are, clothing has become a kind of moral duty - a 'protection' against giving way to evil.
Whilst a considered reading of Genesis 3 itself should give us serious doubts about that understanding (and raise other questions - what 'nakedness' is in focus here?), this really doesn't sit too well with how the body is understood in the New Testament itself, or the nature of the resurrection hope which Paul unpacks in Romans and Corinthians (another great area to study).

What this really shows is that the Fall has entirely broken what was meant (and will be) our natural relationship to the created order, to one another and to the physical body, but that this is what has been redeemed and will be made evident in the approaching 'glorifying' (re-instating of proper significance) of God's handiwork. It also shows us that we can allow badly informed piety to become our schoolmaster with regards to our bodies, fueling a distaste for God's gifts which mars and demeans what we should truly honor.

What struck me was just how crucial such insights have to be when we begin to look at the practical aspects of Christian living. Paul speaks of us giving our bodies as a 'living sacrifice to God' - you actually cannot do that if you hate the physical, the sexual, the natural part of what you are. God is calling for us to show Christ through these very means - in the manner in which we share God's life and love to the world around us. "Denying ourselves" in the sense of cutting ourselves off from the life we are rooted in removes the very means whereby God wants this current world to be 'savored' with the richness of Christ and His redeeming work.

There's a great deal to unpack here, and all I've done so far on this is really get my toes wet.

What comes to mind when you begin to consider how we may have mis-placed godliness?

Savoring the world

"Medieval Europe not only created the experimental science of optics and initiated surprisingly modern-sounding discussions about cosmology, but began the systematic teaching of astronomy to university undergraduates.... All this was done with the full encouragement of Christianity - for without that, there would never have been the physical resources nor the intellectual initiative to follow this path...
The disciplined search for truth which we call science, therefore, is not the natural foe of such faith, and to see it as such is to commit a serious injury to those historical forces which have produced Western civilization". Dr Allan Chapman.

Something is finally dawning in some quarters of our culture regarding the bareness of atheistic secularism, particularly with regard to its caricature of the significance of Christianity.
Today, a review was published in a popular paper here of a new television drama, some seven years in the making, to be aired this week, which seeks to challenge our incorrect assumptions on the Purtian period in England, which actually marked the beginnings of enriching society in ways we would all value as good.

"The Puritan conviction", writes Lucy Powell, "was that beauty was God-given, not man made. This meant that women could loosen the punishing pinch of fashionable, tight-wasted bodices, ditch the cumbersome hoops and bustles in their skirts, and forgo the established practice of dropping arsenic into their eyes to make them wide. They also stopped dousing their faces with acid to make them white and wrinkle-free... the period saw a radical shift in the idea of what the role of a woman would be".

The first real 'sexual revolution' occurred at this time. Puritan Men and women were able to 'socialize' in a manner which shocked at the time, and within marriage, the Puritans also encouraged sexual pleasure and satisfaction for both men and women as an inherent part of love making. Far from being the dismal characters we think them to be, they merely sought to show that all of life is best within its proper context, and key to this was an understanding of the relationship of the created order to its Creator.

Modern history is replete with examples of this 'savoring' of our world by Christianity. From the abolition of slavery, to the beginning of trade unions and social welfare, from the rich development of our language, to the origins of the first modern schools of learning for science and the arts, all stems from this same weaving of life and faith.
Is it then, perhaps any wonder, that in a time when there has been very active attempts to dis-engage such association and dismiss these connections that our culture has become more fractured and dis-membered and life has become more demeaned?

Jesus told His disciples that they would become 'salt and light' in this world, and history shows us the reality of what transpires when His body enriches the days and times around them.
Rather than becoming removed from these days, let's seek to do our best to value and season the lives of people and the opportunities we are given with the meaning of all those good things which come down to us from our Father, through His redemption, made ours in Christ.

The continuing collision

"Western Civilisation had an innate dynamic drive whose deepest source was its sense of direction and purpose - a confidence in its destiny. This came from Christianity".

Historian John Roberts.

"And I will bring division between you - between your offspring and hers". Genesis 3:15


I was fascinated to read these remarks this week by Dave Scott on the Uncommon Descent website:

"Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for (the modern world). Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday—these are deeply held (mythic) structures. They are profoundly conservative belief".

We live an in a day which seeks to define itself as inherently pluralistic, where 'spirituality' is either deemed as inherently viewed as an evolutionary miss-demeanor, or essentially practiced as nothing beyond a dualistic 'merging', amidst the illusion of the material, into the ultimate state of non-existence. Within such a context, it is fascinating to see what Mr Scott has touched upon, that the almost gravity-like pull of the Biblical message of Creation, Fall and Redemption cannot actually be exorcised from our lives - it has to be re-defined, made manageable and, of greatest import, achievable by the 'natural' human community - able, it is said, to achieve this goal through its own common will.

In the 15th century, prior to any contact with the West, the Incan king, Pachacuti, builder of the famous city of Machu Picchu, renounced his culture's worship of the sun god, Inti, and for good reason. He understood that the sun was merely part of the physical order, which like himself, was bound to the realities of that realm. In a hymn composed by the king, he renews the almost extinct memory of Viracocha, the omnipotent creator of all things. "He is ancient, remote, supreme and uncreated", noted the king, "He manifests Himself as a trinity when He so wishes. He created all the peoples of the world by His word. He alone is our origin, ordaining our years and causing us to be sustained and grow through the gifts of His creation.He has pity upon our wretchedness and alone judges and absolves us. He should be revered with awe and humility".

We recognize our need for the very 'pattern' which scripture conveys, but like the fallen of Eden, we quickly seek to re-define such matters via the fig-leaves of our terms, our misguided understanding. Only those, like Pachacuti, who stand before the naked truth of our reality can hope to gain true wealth and wisdom - we are either made by one who has marked us with destiny, or we and all we inhabit are inherently irrelevant. These are essentially the only two players in the room. The age-long truth, so mirrored in the aspiration of eternity in our hearts, is that there is indeed one in whom we live and move and have our being, and though He is far above and beyond our most determined means to ignorantly define, He has made Himself known through the coming of the Word.