Article
- Date:
- Tuesday 4th October 2022
Year A, The Second Sunday of Advent - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Hurstpierpoint
- Service:
- Family Eucharist
- Readings:
- Isaiah 11.1-11
Matthew 3.1-12
The tendency of many Biblical interpreters, particularly since the 18th Century "Enlightenment" to try to contest with rationalists on their own ground by saying that the Biblical texts can be understood as literally and unambiguously as a physics textbook has got the Western Christian Church into all sorts of trouble, not least that concerned with confronting Charles Darwin's account of creation; but there is another aspect of the literalist trend which has been equally damaging and that has been the decline in symbolic readings of Biblical texts, so predominant in the first three-quarters of Western Christian history.
It is, after all, very difficult to decide what the literal meaning might be of today's Reading from Isaiah which has forced the literalists to a plausible but far from rational conclusion. Taken at face value, this text is about a time when the reconciling power of God will be realised through the birth of a miraculous child, of the house of Jesse, who will put God's earthly kingdom in order in a quite remarkably revolutionary way, when all the earthly rules of power and cruelty will be overthrown in favour of quite spectacular reconciliation.
But does this account refer, in the first instance, to what will happen at the birth of Jesus or at the end of earthly time? The literalists force us to make a choice but the symbolists allow both understandings which seems obvious to me because the first possibility, the birth of a Messiah, is a necessary precondition for the reconciling of God's realm and our realm in an everlasting reign of peace. We simply don't have to hair split about this. Whatever Isaiah might have been saying to his direct audience in the 6th Century BC about the fulfilment of God's liberating promise, the most basic literal meaning of the text, the other two readings are symbolically compelling.
I begin this way because the theology which both caused and grew out of the literalist approach to Scripture in a symbiotic relationship has tended over the centuries to back us into a rather arid corner where the defensive requirements of rationalism have made us deeply worried about claiming that much of what we hold most dear is a matter not of rational demonstrability but, quite the opposite, of inexplicable mystery except, of course, that to use the word "inexplicable" in this context is absurd. For all the scientific rationalism which is brought to bear on the meaning of existence, the idea that we are simply a bundle of electro-chemical transactions, is shown by our life experience to be reductive commonplace, for the essence of what we are is not involuntary transaction but is a painful pursuit of love, a need to reach outside ourselves in acknowledgement that there are greater powers than we can comprehend, that we are hopeless yet hopeful investigators of mystery and that there is a much wider and deeper cohesion in the universe, of which we are minute organisms, than we can possibly grasp, for all our poetry and music, our striving for selfless love and our efforts at coherent theology.
So far, so general; but we are unique inheritors of God's specific promise, through his Chosen People, by virtue of the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Jesus, that the human race will one day be reconciled to God by means of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing more sure; nothing more secure. God promised, Jesus realised, the Spirit maintains and time will give way to timeless perfection.
In the light of that wonder, the gruel of theological rationalism must give way to the richness of the everlasting banquet; and that is why this Reading is part of the scene setting for the Incarnation, for we must see past the immediate drama and pathos of the Nativity to its cosmic implications. For God in Christ not only fulfilled Isaiah's promise of liberation for His Chosen People but he also under-wrote in Jesus the promise of the transformation of creation from its current imperfection to ultimate glory.
That being said, that being grasped in the most tentative, provisional way, accepting that all the language of glory must be deeply problematic, the conclusion for us is precisely the opposite of what the rationalists tell us. We are better people because we accept our creaturely place in the shadow of the mystery of the Creator; we are better people because we accept that love makes sacrificial demands which no human calculus could accept; we are better people because we accept our limitations; but also better because we will not plead our limitation as an excuse for fatalism. Mystery shows us the limit of our agency but it also shows us the purpose of that agency, the justification for our createdness; and that is to lead a life of worship and love.
But too often our worship and love are practised with the self-imposed disadvantage that we are inclined to divorce them from wonder instead of nourishing them with wonder. We know this in our better moments because which one of us is not moved by the wonder of little children at the crib, bereft of sophistication, accepting that this tiny baby is heaven's gift to the earth?
There is much theology surrounding the events of Holy Week and Easter but I fear that the meaning of those events has largely been lost in our secular world. Now, the principal connection between our belief and the secular world is the event of Christmas; so we must strain with all our might to save Christmas from the secularists; to elevate the Nativity Play above reindeer, elves, the man in the red coat, the world of the Winter Wonderland and the Pantomime. For the make-believe snow will melt and the presents will lose their charm and the fusty glittering costumes will be put back in their boxes: and still, and still, it is our purpose to proclaim the Sacred Wonderland: to tell the world that one day the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the kid, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.