Preferring Nothing to Christ

Luke 2:22-40

Throughout the liturgical year there are some hymns which seem to draw together all that I hold dear in biblical imagery and incarnational theology. Hail to the Lord who Comes is one of those hymns. This hymn helps me make an immediate connection between the Gospel scene of the presentation and my own life. Sometimes I need those connections to be very obvious.

Hail to the Lord who comes,
Comes to the temple gate,
Not with his angel hosts,
Nor in his kingly state;

But borne upon the throne
Of Mary’s gentle breast;
Thus to his father’s house
He comes, a humble guest.

The world’s true light draws near
All darkness to dispel,
The flame of faith is lit
And dies the power of hell.

Our bodies and our souls
Are temples now for him,
For we are born of grace –
God lights our souls within.

O Light of all the earth!
We light our lives with thee;
The chains of darkness gone
All sons of God are free. 

The hymn opens with a scene that is fairly easy to picture: Mary and Joseph, a little travel weary, come in faithfulness to the Temple, clutching their precious child. I imagine them standing on the Temple threshold, breathing in the sacred. They are filled with that awe that we have all experienced when we enter a sacred place. I imagine Joseph holding the offering tight and Mary holding Jesus tight. The gift in Joseph’s hands represents the love and longing of every faithful Jew to fulfill the Torah. The gift in Mary’s hand represents the love and longing of everyone who looked forward to the coming of the Saviour.

Can we see ourselves in the scene? Can we picture our hands open with all that we hold precious?

The world’s true light draws near
All darkness to dispel

The promise of this light draws Simeon and Anna near. They have walked towards this light all their lives. Each prayer, each small act of kindness, each fulfilling of the Torah has made space inside them to recognise and receive the light. And there they stand, bathed in that light. God’s promises have come full circle.

Our bodies and our souls
Are temples now for him,

These are the lines that touch me most from this hymn. They speak of wholeness and the goodness of every created thing. Read alongside the Gospel text they invite each one of us to be that Temple. We build the Temple out of the many fragments of our lives. It’s incarnational. It’s messy. But the promise is there that we are ‘born of grace’ and God ‘lights our souls within’. We were carried once, a precious bundle held tight. Our parents made an offering of all they held dear when they brought us to church for Baptism. God’s light has always been within us.

We light our lives with thee;
The chains of darkness gone
All sons of God are free. 

In these days of darkness and uncertainty we might look outside ourselves for light. In fact, the light we seek is already within us. We often glimpse it in others first. Today’s feast is an invitation to celebrate the light within each one of us.

How is God calling you to celebrate the light this Candlemas?

Numbers 6:22-27
Luke 2:16-21
In the Desert Tradition the men and women who fled to the physical margins of society developed a very particular relationship with Scripture and particularly with Biblical characters. They were judged by the Master to have understood the Scriptures in so far as they embodied the virtues of the Biblical characters.

This teaching came to mind today as I listened to the Gospel. When I ask myself how can I embody Mary’s virtues, I am brought back to this verse:

As for Mary she treasured all of these things and pondered them in her heart.

In the regular rhythm of monastic life I am invited to treasure and to ponder many things. Silence provides the seed ground for this to happen. It’s always an invitation. I imagine Mary as someone who had always been closely attuned to the many ways in which God speaks. I imagine that the Psalms and Prophetic books had sunk into her bones. She knew what to treasure.

How is God calling you to treasure and to ponder as this new year begins? 

S

Christ is here, Emmanuel!
Majesty so mild:
Wisdom dwells with grace and truth,
Hidden in this child.

Here is God’s eternal Son,
Now to us made known,
By the Spirit’s love conceived,
Mary’s flesh his own.

Born of God’s creative will,
Christ is Light from Light,
Come to rescue Adam’s sons,
Waiting in the night.

Father, Son and Spirit blest:
Heav’n their glory sings,
While the earth with mighty voice
Praise and Worship brings.

Stanbrook Abbey

This beautiful hymn says everything I want to say about the mystery of Jesus born for us at Bethlehem. May Jesus reveal himself to you today in every moment of grace and truth. Happy Christmas!

CHRISTMAS EVE

2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a,16
Luke 1:67-79

On this last day of Advent the Church lays before us a pivotal text in the Old Testament, 2 Sam 7. Walter Brueggemann describes it as ‘the taproot of the Messianic idea in Israel’.

After successfully bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and putting it in a tent, David now wonders if he should build something much grander. There’s a wordplay at work here. The word for ‘house’ can also mean ‘dynasty.’ The prophet Nathan tells David;

‘The Lord will make you great; and the Lord will make you a House.’

The roles are now reversed as David will no longer need to build God a ‘house’ as God intends to build David a ‘dynasty’. God makes a ground-breaking promise that in the lineage of David his faithful love will be made manifest. Up until this point God’s promises have been conditional, but now the dynasty is guaranteed in perpetuity. None of this is David’s doing. David is to be bound in relationship to the Lord: ‘I will be a father to him and he a son to me.’ The tender language of father and son always strikes me. God’s covenant is not a legal contract, but a relationship of love. As the story of salvation unfolds there are many falls from grace along the way. God’s promise remains.

Our final Gospel text in Advent brings us to the threshold of the fulfilment of all of God’s promises. In the Benedictus Zechariah sings of rescue, salvation and the promise proclaimed by the prophets. His son, John, will prepare the way for the Saviour. All of this is possible ‘by the tender mercy of our God’. Through the desert and exile, through the poor and the easily forgotten, our Advent journey has taken us to the very heart of God.

You may feel your Advent journey hasn’t quite ended and you are not really ready for Christmas to begin. Perhaps your plans have been radically changed and you are left disappointed. Into every situation of your life God is waiting to pour his tender mercy.

Where do you most need God’s mercy this Christmas?

O King of all the nations,
the only joy of every human heart;
O keystone of the mighty arch of man,
come and save the creature
you fashioned out of dust.

O Rex Gentium

O King of our desire whom we despise,
King of the nations never on the throne,
Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,
Rejected joiner, making many one,
You have no form or beauty for our eyes,
A King who comes to give away his crown,
A King within our rags of flesh and bone.
We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,
For we ourselves are found in you alone.
Come to us now and find in us your throne,
O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

Malcolm Guite

Listen to Malcolm Guite read his sonnet:

Malachi 3:1-4,23-24
Luke 1:57-66

‘And the Lord you are seeking will suddenly enter his Temple; and the angel of the covenant who you are longing for, yes, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.’

In today’s reading from the prophet Malachi there are two words which always stand out for me: ‘seeking’ and ‘longing’. These words are firmly part of our Advent vocabulary. We have met them in our Scripture readings and hymns. Through the centuries Christian writers have explored the theme of longing for God. I have found myself reminiscing about my childhood and the special times of longing for birthdays, holidays, the arrival of my grandparents from Denmark. Nothing as an adult seems quite to equal the build up of excitement that I experienced as a child.

In her book, The Coming of God, Maria Boulding osb, captures beautifully the longing that is in every human heart:

‘… the work of grace is going on in you through the whole business of living, to hollow you out, to make you Capax Dei as the old mystics used to say, able to receive God. You yourself are the place of desire and need. All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that he may fill you. It is not your desire that makes it happen but his. He longs through your heart. Your insufficiency and your forgetting to long for him are no barrier. In your prayer God is seeking you and himself creating the prayer; he is on the inside of the longing.’

The Gospel text from Luke 1:57-66 today tells of the birth of John the Baptist and his naming.

The time came for Elizabeth to have her child, and she gave birth to a son; and when her neighbours and relations heard that the Lord had shown her so great a kindness, they shared her joy.

Here Luke expresses a joy that I can easily relate to. Shared good news brings a blessing that ripples out to all who hear it. This joy is possible because Elizabeth and Zechariah are both people who have walked faithfully in God’s ways and been humble enough to make space for God.  

How can you make space for God today?

1 Samuel 1:24-28
Luke 1:46-56

I don’t think I could imagine a more poignant scene if I tried than that of Hannah leaving her child Samuel in the Temple at Shiloh. Everything about the story raises a huge question. Hannah had longed for a child and saw the birth of Samuel as the greatest blessing. And yet, she had made a vow that he would be given over to the Lord.

Perhaps we need to take a step back from the poignant details and see this episode as part of God’s overarching plan. By growing up in Shiloh Samuel is shown to have been trained from a very young age to listen to God’s word and to act upon it. It is Samuel who will anoint David as King, and from David’s line the Messiah will be born. 

We can trace a thread through the stories of the Old Testament of people who were faithful to God against all odds. Each small choice and each big ‘Yes’ paves the way for the fulfilment of God’s promise. Maria Boulding, in her book, The Coming of God, expresses this beautifully:

‘The chosen people were created to be a centre of attunement, receptivity and expectation, a place of felt need and desire. They were to listen to God’s word, to long for him, and to be the womb-community which would bring forth the One who was to come.’

In Luke’s Gospel when Mary sings her Magnificat she embodies every longing of Israel. Every choice to be receptive to God’s Word will now take flesh in her.

And still today, God longs for our whole-hearted participation in the promise of salvation. We are still called to be that place of longing for our communities, for our country, for the world.   

Read through the passages a few times during the day. How is God speaking to you through these texts?

Song of Songs 2:8-14
Luke 1:39-45

O Radiant Dawn,
splendour of eternal light,
sun of justice;
come, shine on those
who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

O Oriens

First light and then first lines along the east
To touch and brush a sheen of light on water
As though behind the sky itself they traced
The shift and shimmer of another river
Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;
The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.
Blake saw it too. Dante and Beatrice
Are bathing in it now, away upstream…
So every trace of light begins a grace
In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam
Is somehow a beginning and a calling;
“Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream
For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,
Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking”.

Malcolm Guite

Listen to Malcolm Guite read his sonnet:

Isaiah 7:10-14
Matthew 1:18-24

‘This is how Jesus CHRIST came to be born.’

Matthew begins his gospel with a lengthy genealogy which requires great concentration, whether you are listening to it or reading it aloud. It’s not unlike having a complicated story plot explained or trying to work out how you are related to a distant relative. The lineage which Matthew lays out so carefully is our lineage too. We are as much reliant on God’s promise as our Biblical ancestors.

Matthew tells his story through Joseph’s eyes. Joseph’s Davidic descent is all important here. This descent, so carefully explained, embeds Jesus very firmly in Jewish tradition. Two leaps of faith are required for God’s plan to come to fulfilment: Mary’s ‘yes’ and Joseph’s willingness to be a father to Jesus.

We are almost at the end of our Advent journey. The path of promise that we have traced through the Scriptures doesn’t come to an end with Christ’s birth. The unique story of how each of us came to be born stands alongside the birth of our Saviour. God still waits for our ‘yes’ and our willingness to enter deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation.

Look back over Advent.
How have you been drawn deeper into the mystery of the Incarnation?

Isaiah 7:10-14
Luke 1:26-38

O Key of David
O royal power of Israel
controlling at your will
the gate of Heaven:
Come, break down the prison walls
of death for those who dwell in darkness
and lead your captive people into freedom.

O Clavis David

Even in the darkness where I sit
And huddle in the midst of misery
I can remember freedom, but forget
That every lock must answer to a key,
That each dark clasp, sharp and intricate,
Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard,
Particular, exact and intimate,
The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.
I cry out for the key I threw away
That turned and over turned with certain touch
And with the lovely lifting of a latch
Opened my darkness to the light of day.
O come again, come quickly, set me free
Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

Malcolm Guite

Listen to Malcolm Guite read his sonnet: