The road to Bethlehem

One of the bonuses of being retired is that you do not spend the week before Christmas in a state of anxiety as to whether a) you will have all the services prepared and printed, b) you have contacted everyone who is taking part in those services, c) you have identified all those who need a pastoral visit or communion at home and d) you have done all your own Christmas shopping and written your Christmas cards.

And so I find myself, a week before Christmas, with time to meditate on the joy and wonder of this season. I shall use the time to blog, to share some of my own thoughts and to post material from other sources which reflect what is on my mind and what I believe about the incarnation. Please feel free to share this with others.

I have called this series of reflections 'The road to  Bethlehem'  because, like Mary and Joseph we are all on that road. That road, 2000 years ago, was a hard road to follow; hard in the sense that it would have been a rough track on which to take a pregnant woman. Hard,  because of the need to make the journey for registration purposes despite Mary's advanced state. Joseph had already accepted his responsibility to look after the woman,who was clearly carrying his child, and now he had to drag her 70 miles to his birthplace.

The road we follow each Christmas is a hard one too. We have to negotiate the paraphernalia which these days threatens to engulf what should be a simple celebration and remembrance of the birth of a baby who changed the world. Not only do we have to contend with the almost obscene materialism of Christmas, but we still try to deceive ourselves and others that the beautiful, well known birth stories are literally true. Only when we read them with the eyes of faith, with the intellect of 21st century thinking human beings and in the light of our vastly improved knowledge of the world we live in, will the incarnation have meaning for us. Only then will our carols and crib scenes speak to us of God's intimate relationship with his world.

I begin with a poem by John Shelby Spong

Christpower

Far back beyond the beginning,
stretching out into the unknowable,
incomprehensible,
unfathomable depths, dark and void,
of infinite eternity behind all history,
the Christpower was alive.
This was the
Living
bursting, pulsing
generating, creating
smoldering, exploding
fusing, multiplying
emerging, erupting
pollenizing, inseminating
heating, cooling
power of life itself: Christpower.
And it was good!
Here
all things that we know
began their journey into being.
Here
light separated from darkness.
Here
Christpower began to take form.
Here
life became real,
and that life spread into
emerging new creatures
evolving
into ever higher intelligence.
There was a sacrifice here
and
a mutation there.
There was grace and resurrection appearing
in their natural order,
occurring, recurring,
and always driven by the restless,
creating,
energizing
life force of God, called the Christpower,
which flowed in the veins of every living thing
for ever
and ever
and ever
and ever.
And it was good!
In time, in this universe,
there emerged creatures who were called human,
and the uniqueness of these creatures
lay in that they could
perceive
this life-giving power.
They could name it
and embrace it
and grow with it
and yearn for it.
Thus human life was born,
but individual expressions of that human life
were marked with a sense of
incompleteness,
inadequacy,
and a hunger
that drove them ever beyond the self
to search for life's secret
and
to seek the source of life's power.
This was a humanity that could not be content with
anything less.
And once again
in that process
there was
sacrifice and mutation,
grace and resurrection
now in the human order,
occurring, recurring
And it was good!
Finally, in the fullness of time,
within that human family,
one
unique and special human life appeared:
whole
complete
free
loving
living
being
at one
at peace
at rest.
In that life was seen with new intensity
that primal power of the universe,
Christpower.
And it was good!
Of that life people said: Jesus,
you are the Christ,
for in you we see
and feel
and experience
the living force of life
and love
and being
of God.
He was hated,
rejected,
betrayed,
killed,
but
he was never distorted.
For here was a life in which
the goal, the dream, the hope
of all life
is achieved.
A single life among many lives.
Here
among us, out from us,
and yet this power, this essence,
was not from us at all,
for the Christpower that was seen in Jesus
is finally of God.
And even when the darkness of death
overwhelmed him,
the power of life resurrected him;
for Christpower is life
eternal,
without beginning,
without ending.
It is the secret of creation.
It is the goal of humanity.
Here in this life we glimpse
that immortal
invisible
most blessed
most glorious
almighty life-giving force
of this universe
in startling completeness
in a single person.
Men and women tasted the power that was in him
and they were made whole by it.
They entered a new freedom,
a new being.
They knew resurrection and what it means to live
in the Eternal Now.
So they became agents of that power,
sharing those gifts from generation to generation,
creating and re-creating,
transforming, redeeming,
making all things new.
And as this power moved among human beings,
light
once more separated from darkness.
And it was good!
They searched for the words to describe
the moment that recognized the fullness of this power
living in history,
living in the life of this person.
But words failed them.
So they lapsed into poetry:
When this life was born,
they said,
a great light split the dark sky.
Angelic choruses peopled the heavens
to sing of peace on earth.
They told of a virgin mother,
of shepherds compelled to worship,
of a rejecting world that had no room in the inn.
They told of stars and oriental kings,
of gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
For when this life was born
that power that was
and is
with God,
inseparable,
the endless beginning,
was seen
even in a baby
in swaddling clothes
lying in a manger.
Christpower.
Jesus, you are the Christ.
To know you is to live,
to love,
to be.
O come, then, let us adore him!