More Wonder, Less Mystery

What would you say if someone asked you “how do you understand the relationship between God, Jesus and the Spirit?”

A simpler question, perhaps, than when I asked “who is God for you, personally?” It still has lots of unpacking to do, in order to be clear about the terms and context of the question, but you’re probably more likely to have a ready answer.

That may be because this relationship is a pretty fundamental piece of the christian tradition, the idea that there is one God, but the nature of that one God is three unique and distinct persons: God, Jesus and the Spirit. It has a variety of expressions, but the one most people are used to hearing, the classic one, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There’s also Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer or Parent, Friend and Comforter or God-in-the-world, God-among-us and God-within-us or Lover, Beloved and Love Between. There are many more, all working hard to help us understand.

This is the Trinity, a term that comes from the latin meaning triad or threefold. Not be fussy about it, but just to be clear: it doesn’t simply mean three, it means three in relationship. I like to think of it as “tri-unity.” The relationship part is important and, as we often find with relationships, it can be really confounding.

The term Trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible and the relationship isn’t explicitly stated, but the understanding that there is one was obvious enough that there were questions and wondering from the beginning, and that meant that the early church felt the need to clarify it. So they did - three persons of one substance or essence - but also acknowledged that there’s a degree of mystery in it. How can three be one and one be three and the one still be one and the three still each be one? Maybe it’s less a mystery to accept and more a wonder to embrace.

There were lots of questions. There still are. Things have changed, though, and we’re not as quick to label people as heretics for wondering something different than the “official” explanation. Most of us anyway. And that’s so important because it means we can wonder and we can work at it.

I think the great thing about all this is seeing that, in all our stories, God, Jesus and the Spirit are in a relationship, a relationship so intimate that they are connected, engaged and immersed in a way that both connects them and allows for the unique expression of their selves. There is power in that, there is grace in that and most importantly, there is love in that. That we can’t explain it in a few words, a single sentence or even a paragraph doesn’t challenge its value.

Imagine if we could see our own relationships with that lens. Our relationship with God, with all of creation, our relationships with each other as members of one family of humanity. If we began with that awareness of connectedness, the awareness of that fundamental one-ness of all things, and we reached out from our place in it, rather than trying to establish our own uniqueness and then bringing others to it, maybe confrontation and conflict could be replaced with acceptance and engagement. I don’t have a certain method or technique for doing that, but, for me, I’m pretty sure it begins with knowing that God is here, Jesus shows us how and the Spirit is the inspiration to live it.

WrestleMania

What would you say if someone asked you “who is God for you, personally?”

That was going to be my opening sentence. Still is, I suppose, but as I was typing it, I thought well, that’s not a fair question. I’ve already given you the context in which I want the answer by saying “who.” Maybe your understanding of God is more “what.” Or even “how.” Your answer might also include a “where” component and perhaps your response might simply have been “why?”

I was also going to add “in thirty words or less,” but that became more and more ridiculous as I thought about the whole who, what, how thing.

Maybe “understand” is the way to go. Or “comprehend,” even “know.”

Maybe “God” isn’t even the right word for some people.

Already you may be wondering if I’m overthinking this, but I think wrestling with the question can be helpful in finding our way to an answer.

For many people, describing God can be tricky. We might resort to language and images of our particular faith tradition, the language of religion. I think that’s fine. After all, religion is the structure that we human beings have created in order that we might understand God better, and communal language enhances our sense of community around our understanding. That’s presuming, of course, that we all understand the meaning of the terminology we’re using.

Except that’s the one thing that was specific in the question. The question was “personally.” Even when we make collective statements of faith, like a creed, we still need to be mindful that there’s a communal understanding and a personal one. If we aren’t, then we’re going to have to wrestle with sameness versus diversity and uniformity versus unity. True community acknowledges, appreciates and embraces the uniqueness of its members and how they contribute to each other and the whole. That’s a strength, not a weakness.

We might resort to language and images of nature, particularly if we know God as creator. These might also lead us to knowing God in our own creativity, in our own imaginations, as we are part of the creation in which we live. Here we might also have to wrestle with our experience of the world in which we live, especially the moments we struggle with feeling God’s absence.

Whatever language or images we find meaningful, we might also find that they are constantly changing, just as we are. We grow, we change, and it’s important to keep wrestling with God, to keep wondering and imagining.

I keep saying “wrestling” because I keep thinking of the story of Jacob wrestling with a figure he later imagines to have been divine (Genesis 32:22-32). The figure can’t seem to beat Jacob, so he injures his hip. Even then, Jacob won’t let go until the figure blesses him. The figure renames him Israel “for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Jacob realizes “I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” More than preserved, I think. The point of this “wrestling” isn’t in winning the competition, but in the transforming nature of the interaction: it changed Jacob, and not just in name.

When we wrestle with God, we are changed. We learn, we grow, we understand, we know. Even when we can articulate God - whether it’s in thirty words or thirty thousand - it’s important to revisit, re-engage and renew. That’s where the transforming power of God is, in the engagement. Imagine that. 

Star of Wonder

“Second star to the right and straight on til morning,” says Peter Pan. That’s how you get to Neverland in J.M. Barrie’s classic story.

Begs a few questions though, doesn’t it. To the right of what? Polaris, the North Star, is the only one that’s fixed to us (relatively) but even then, “second to the right” is going to change, so which “second?” Wouldn’t it also depend on where you start and when? And how are you travelling?

But then, why would you want to take it so literally, anyway? It’s a fantasy story. It’s an opportunity to escape into wonder and imagination, from which we might learn something about ourselves.

The season of Epiphany begins with a star. I wonder if we could use a little wonder and imagination to see where it can take us.

It took the magi to Jesus. The star, according to the prophecy they were following, would lead them to the promised one, the one who is to “shepherd my people.” The gospel of Matthew, where we find the magi’s story, seems to combine the prophetic words of Samuel and Micah from Hebrew scripture. The point is, the star was the sign that would lead them to the messiah.

The story begs a few questions, though, doesn’t it? Why didn’t anyone else seem to see the star or think it was important? How long had they been following it? It seems to move: “and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen in the east, until it stopped over the place where the child was.” What kind of star is that? How did they know the star led them to right place and the right child? This was likely not the kind of king they were expecting to find, judging by the prophecy and their gifts. And, my favourite, how many magi were there? There were three gifts, but no indication that there was only three magi. I have more questions, but I think that’s enough to make the same point: why would you want to take it so literally, anyway?

What if the point of the story is that we find God when we wonder, imagine and open our hearts and minds to the possibility that God may be found? In a child, in each other, in the poor and the rich, the wise and the foolish, even in an incredibly mobile star, even in all of creation. And, just as easily, that God may be found by anyone. The magi were not from Judea. They weren’t Jews, they were foreigners from “the east,” they could have been of any faith or even of none at all.

No, that’s not right. They had faith. And hope. Faith enough to follow the star and hope that the prophecy would be fulfilled. Faith that they’d found the promised one where they did and hope that their gifts would be enough to honour him.

Jesus would grow up to spend his life trying to show people that God isn’t in the literal word or only for a specific people or tradition. God is in the love that is at the heart of all things and in the life of all things. The star that leads us is an open heart, a wondering mind and an engaging spirit.

Beginning Again

Christmas stories, like the Great Story itself, bear repeating. Especially when they’re childhood stories of traditions, there’s a lot of meaning in those. Even more so when it feels like a ritual, a practice that informs tradition. Sometimes the telling becomes the tradition. So hear me out: maybe I’m making a tradition of telling this story again.

When I was a child, we had a really nice crèche, a nativity scene that we put out at Christmas. There were lots of figures in it, people and animals, even an angel, and they were all handmade, some as tall as 8 inches. It had a beautiful wooden frame of a stable that everyone fit in, and having it out on the sideboard in the dining room was always a highlight of our Christmas decorations.

My Dad usually got it out about the first or second week of Advent. But he never put the whole thing out at once. At first, there would be some animals, a cow and a donkey, maybe a sheep or two in the stable. By the week before Christmas, the angel had taken its place on the wall above the stable and Mary and Joseph had appeared, but there was no baby yet.

On Christmas Eve, the baby would appear in the manger and there would be shepherds and, of course, the star would hang with the angel on the wall over the stable. The magi, the wise ones from the East, would appear in the living room. The living room.

They began their journey on the other side of the living room. Each day or two, when he remembered, my Dad would move them closer to the rest of the scene. They’d travel from end table to coffee table, across the great expanse of the piano, until they arrived at the manger on January 6. That’s Epiphany, the day on the church calendar when the magi arrived and Jesus was revealed to them as the child they were seeking, the Messiah. Once they arrived, it was time to take down the crèche and put it away until next year.

As a child, and especially as a teenager, I’m sure I found that whole thing kind of silly. More recently, I’ve come to realize how wise it was.

I wonder, sometimes, that we spend so much time getting ready for Christmas and enjoying Christmas before it actually happens, that to have it be “over” is often a relief. Already within a day or two of December 25th, Christmas is over and packed away. All we want to do now is get on with the new year. So we put our whole story in one manger at one time.

But that’s not how the story goes, is it? First of all, Mary had to be pregnant for nine months, so the story starts a lot earlier than Christmas Eve. Then they had to travel to Bethlehem and, when the baby was born, the angel told the shepherds, who trudged in from the fields to see Jesus. There might have been more visitors, too, townsfolk or friends, curious strangers marvelling at a baby born in a stable.

The magi followed the star that first appeared with Jesus’ birth. It’s not like they could get there over night. In might even have taken a year or two. That’s why Herod, afraid of this promised “king,” says the story in Matthew’s gospel, ordered that all boys two years old and under should be killed. Warned in a dream, Joseph took his family to Egypt to escape. So, born in a stable, worshiped by shepherds, revered by magi and so feared by a King that he tried to kill him – that’s an exciting childhood! Certainly more than one night.

I’m not suggesting that we should take the Christmas story more literally. It’s just that Christmas is so much bigger than God dropping into a manger one night. When we spend more time with the story, it’s amazing how much God’s love is revealed, not just in the moment of birth, but in the promise and in the living as well. Christmas isn’t just a moment that’s past, it’s the beginning of something new.

Facing Our Fear

In a world so full of fear, can there be anything better than this story we tell at Christmas?

This story of Jesus’ birth that we compile from the gospels of Luke and Matthew, with some insights from the gospel of John, is full of fear. At least, it ought to be, judging by the number of times we hear “don’t be afraid.”

And yet, it doesn’t feel like it.

Any reasonable person would see the challenges here. Angels? However they appear, in daylight or in dreams, whatever you imagine them to be, I don’t think that any of us would readily accept the experience of any of the characters in the story as ordinary and easily explained. Then there’s the news they bring. I bet the social complications of Mary and Joseph’s relationship were challenging, to say the least. The journey to Bethlehem must have been hard and, in its own way, scary. I hardly think the birth of a baby in a barn or stable, whether it was a cave or a building, was anything less than difficult. And the magi, well, you can’t tell me they weren’t at least surprised by how and where they found Jesus and a little bit anxious about getting away from the “disturbed” Herod. 

I doubt that night was the calm, serene pastoral scene we see in nativity sets and on Christmas cards, and hear about in carols that describe a night so still and a “no crying he makes” baby.

No. And I don’t think it was just the angels who said “don’t be afraid,” either. I imagine all the characters in the story, at one time or another, encouraging each other with those words. “Don’t be afraid.” There’s lots to fear.

And yet, it doesn’t feel like it.

I think it’s because Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the magi and all of the other characters we can imagine to be in the story - including ourselves - know that it’s more than just the words, it’s an invitation to be part of what God is doing.

The spirit of love and creation, the life-giving presence of God has been in all things since the beginning. Perhaps in the angel’s invitation to not be afraid, is the invitation to welcome God’s love and embrace it with a hope that engages fear, inspires our actions and moves us to love. Look at Mary and the shepherds. Luke says that their response isn’t just to actively engage what the angel tells them, but to then praise and glorify God for it happening. 

And what’s happening is that power of love creating a new thing. In Jesus, the divine presence will be demonstrated in human expression. The Word will be made flesh, John writes, and we will be able to see, in real terms, what it means to live into the life-giving relationship to which we are born.

I’m not suggesting for a moment that everyone goes away from this story to have a Merry Christmas and a holly, jolly good time. But deeper than the merry is joy and deeper still than the holly jolly, is love.

There are no better words this Christmas: “don’t be afraid: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”

Who's There?

The first to hear the news of Jesus’ birth, according to the gospel of Luke, were shepherds. I wonder. They were certainly the first to hear The Formal Announcement that the messiah had been born. An army of angels singing is about as formal as you can get.

I wonder, though. We all have different visions of what the night might have been like, from the historically accurate to the romantic, but we don’t know for sure. I wonder if there might not have been others who ended up in the stable (whatever that might have looked like). Or maybe the owner was nearby or others who might have heard either Mary giving birth or the baby’s first cries. Or neighbours, even. Bethlehem wasn’t a big place. Perhaps there was even a midwife handy. They might not have got the “good news of great joy,” but I imagine they would have been happy for Mary and Joseph. 

Of course, they might not have cared, or they might have been cranky about being wakened or even concerned for the poor young couple, travelling with a newborn. I think it’s worth wondering about because we might come to the manger as one of those people, depending on where we find ourselves this Christmas.

But Luke’s not interested in that. He wants us to know that a certain group of people got the news first and, as a result, were the first to visit the baby.

Traditionally, you might have heard (as I did) that’s because the shepherds were the lowest rung of the social ladder, marginalized folks who were poor and lonely, dirty and rough, eking out a living in the fields, away from people. The point being that’s who Jesus comes for: the poor and marginalized.

Okay, good point. Of course, Jesus also came for the lost and for sinners. Don’t forget the sinners. And, besides, there’s some debate about whether or not that’s a true description of what people thought of shepherds in 1st century Judea.

See, shepherd was also an image of leadership in those days, of kingship in particular. David, the most revered king of Israel, had been a shepherd. And don’t forget that Joseph is a descendant of David, that’s why they were in Bethlehem in the first place. What about the 23rd psalm? God is my shepherd, it says. There’s even some suggestion that it’s possible the shepherds in the story could have been priests of the temple, charged with caring for the sheep raised to be used for sacrifice. Later, Jesus will be called the Good Shepherd, even later still, the sacrificial Lamb of God.

I know, I know: it’s a nice pastoral story, why are you clouding it with all these other possibilities?

Sometimes I wonder. Not that we got the interpretation of shepherds wrong or that there might have been other people there or even that it’s important who was first, but simply that it could be anyone. And that means it could be me.

If you want to be a character in the Christmas story, just be yourself. That’s who God’s here for. Maybe you can identify with the shepherds or the folks at the inn or even the animals that might have already been in the stable. Maybe you see yourself as an angel or Mary or Joseph. But, to come to Jesus this Christmas, you don’t have to be anyone but who you truly are.

There are Angels

Many churches have a creche or Christmas Crib or nativity or manger scene at Christmas time. By whatever name we call it, it represents the fullness of the story we tell. Each figure has their own story but when we put them together they create a lovely pastoral moment, that beautiful, gentle moment when Jesus is born in Bethlehem. We’ll gather there on Christmas Eve, candles in hand and sing “Silent Night.” Like the characters in the story, our journey there may have been anything but calm and bright. But, for a brief moment, we can set aside other things and just rest with Jesus in the manger.

That’s a good opportunity to reflect on the characters that are gathered there. The newborn Jesus is there in the manger, of course, with Mary and Joseph. There might be some animals that you’d find in a stable or barn, like sheep, goats, cattle, chickens - the list of our imagination likely far outstrips the reality of first century Judea. There would be shepherds, who heard the news from the angels. They might have brought some sheep. You’ll likely see magi, with a camel or two, though their story happened later than that night. But it’s good to include them anyway, they sure seem to belong there. If your creche is particularly elaborate, you might have an extra character or two, like an innkeeper peering around the corner, or a couple of curious towns folk. There should be a star and maybe even an angel.

Ah yes, an angel. It’s the one moment in the story where there’s no mention of one being there. But you know they were. Without angels, there’d be no story.

An angel visits Mary. An angel reassures Joseph. An angel (and a host of angels) shares the news with the shepherds and sends them to the stable. An angel helped the magi get home safely after they saw Jesus. An angel helped the family escape Herod and return home. Angels are everywhere else in the story and you can bet the manger was surrounded by them.

Angels bring the most important message of the story. That’s not the divine pregnancy or the good news of the birth or even protection from danger. It’s this wisdom: don’t be afraid.

There’s no doubt that the sudden appearance of an angel - however you might imagine that to happen - inspires fear in the earthbound characters of the story. Their message likely did, too, even if it was also one of hope or joy. The story is full of challenges. There’s a lot that’s unexpected, unlikely and uncomfortable.

But each time the angel says “don’t be afraid,” the characters find a way to not be afraid. At least, they find a way forward. I suspect they’re still anxious and afraid, but they know something we could really use today.

Emmanuel. When the angel visits Joseph and tells him not to be afraid to marry Mary, Matthew proclaims it to be the fulfillment of a prophecy: “‘look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’” (Matt. 1:23).

God is with us. The spirit of love and creation, the life-giving presence of God, has been in all things since the beginning. Perhaps in the angel’s invitation to not be afraid is the invitation to welcome God’s love again, and embrace it, so that, whatever lies ahead, we know we don’t go there alone.