Reflection by Frances Flatman on next weekend's Readings :-
We are now very close to the celebration of Christmas, ‘the official’ birthday of the Lord. For most of us modern people, this is just about tinsel and excess and we do not expect really to penetrate the story, so we leave it to the kids and nativity scenes. Yet if we make that effort, we shall see that behind the images and metaphors and the strange goings-on lies the message that we can unwrap the story and meet the God who is ever there for us, and embrace his offer which draws broken humanity into his saving grace as we become enfolded in the Son he threw in love to creation; a lifeline, God’s way to be truly human, and our model of what we were always intended to be.
Our Readings begin with Isaiah (7:10-14) with our 8th C prophet confronting the King of Judah, a young and reckless monarch who when confronted by local kings allied himself with the might of Assyria, with Tiglath-Pileser. To demonstrate his loyalty the young king sacrificed his son to the pagan gods of the king and ransacked the Jerusalem Temple of its treasure for a gift to the king; and replaced the Jewish altar with one dedicated to pagan worship. Small wonder then that Isaiah reacted with the vehemence and insistence that he did. Our whole picture, recorded in 2 Kings 16-17 is of a nation which regularly strayed from worship to Yahweh to other gods. Isaiah in consequence looks forward to the action of God himself as he seeks to draw his chosen back to himself; but we note, not with armies or great power, but with the expectation of a “Maiden who will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel, ‘a name which means God is with us’’. God does not work as we would, but rather with the lowliest and even despised. Time perhaps for us to take note.
Matthew (1:18-24) recalls this ancient promise in his Infancy Narrative of the Christ, in a period of similar upheaval in the Jewish state. Palestine had been occupied for around 70 years by Rome, who had put its own puppet kings, the Herodians, on the throne. Idumeans, pagans from the south, the family espoused Judaism when it suited them, indeed, they helped to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem but in the style of a Greek Temple. Herod the Great had also built Baalbek in the Lebanon, a sanctuary of Jupiter/Zeus for Augustus, along with the richly adorned seaport of Caesarea as an offering to the Roman state, but had executed the last of the ancient Hasmonean royal line. What we notice about our Gospel is its insistence that Joseph, distantly of the clan of David, is not part of this power structure ; indeed he gets his impetus from an entirely different source. For Joseph, in common with the majority in the ancient world, was open and alive to ‘meetings with the divine’ in dreams, experiences beyond his ordinary understanding, or even visits by prophets or the holy, which everyone appreciated must be obeyed. Indeed, Joseph is but one ‘dreamer’ recorded by Matthew, for we have the account of the Magi who similarly respond to their dreams and avoid the murderous intent of Herod. Joseph, it appears, far from being a rather skilled but mundane carpenter, regularly communed with God through his dreams, and in the strength of these experiences altered human history. Had he responded otherwise, Mary would have been stoned to death as an adulterous sinner as the law required. So Joseph placed himself in jeopardy by his acceptance of Mary and the child in her womb; had he behaved otherwise Christ would never have been born and the nurturing preparation for his mortal life and ministry, which both Mary and Joseph gave to Jesus would never have taken place, and neither would Joseph had made the life-threatening decision to abandon his home and workplace to avoid the malice of Herod by removing the family to the safety of Egypt where they lived as refugees.
What we today see as something wacky and even nonsense, ancients understood perfectly. Where we might recognise the ‘Spirit’ more in terms of reasoned, careful perception taking place in everyday life as the result of developed insight and choice, ancients recognised these events or experiences as moments of great significance in their lives, causing them to change direction. They were occasions whereby the course of their lives were irrevocably altered. We too, of course, have these ‘meetings’ with divinity; it’s just that we don’t recognise them as such. So, through his ‘choices’, or rather through the power of the Holy Spirit which brought into being the incarnate one, Joseph a small town carpenter altered human history. If we find this difficult, we might think of those we know about whose actions, and perception of the time led them, ordinary as they were, to take actions with momentous outcomes, a Schindler, or even those very ordinary men and women we see as martyrs, not ordinarily courageous people, but folk like you and me, God touched at the appropriate moment, remembered forever.
St Paul, (Romans 1:1-7) a one-time killer of Christians, here describing himself as Christ’s ‘slave’, writes to a Jewish-Christian community in Rome to help them appreciate the Christ centred beliefs they now hold; and as the letter progresses to place reliance on Jewish law in its proper place in the Christian community, now no longer the object of their understanding but simply as a measure of self-understanding. It is now Christ who is the heart and soul of belief. What he wants to stress is the way in which believers in Christ all share through the gift or grace of Christ a common bond, bound together by the Spirit, the same one which filled Jesus himself, and in which we now share for a common purpose. ‘Jesus Christ our Lord who, in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him, was proclaimed Son of God in all his power through his resurrection from the dead. Through him we receive grace and our apostolic mission to preach the obedience of faith to all pagan nations.’ It is within this spirit graced community that the entire fellowship of believers, recipients of this letter, can be greeted by those thrilling words, ‘To you all, then, who are God’s beloved in Rome, called to be saints, may God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ send grace and peace.’ The fact that this is the latest extant Pauline letter we have and as we know, Paul and Peter would shortly die with other Christians in Rome under the persecution of Nero in 64 CE, in no way detracts from the point he was making, which was that all the members of this community holding belief in Christ live and act within the power of the spirit, the same one which empowered Jesus in his earthly ministry, and works today to send us all out to draw others all over the world into the Body of Christ. I love that continuity, that ‘belonging’, which draws us all together. May we all live in the Spirit.
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