Bloody Stupid God-botherers

Matthew 1. 18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

[NRSV]

There is much huffing and puffing in Western society about this passage, about its dissimilarities to the account in Luke’s gospel-account, and the absence of such a narrative in Mark (or John, but that’s different again). There is also huffing and puffing of the “shock horror, virgin birth narratives were common in the first century” type, and of the “aren’t Christians silly to believe this imaginary friend fairy tale stuff.” Beneath these critiques is an unspoken or perhaps unrecognized assumption that the early Christians (like their later counterparts) were really rather thick to believe this coddle-pop.

Balderdash! The early Christians weren’t particularly interested in the bio-mechanics of Jesus’ conception. They knew that “parthenogenesis” (virgin birth) stories conveyed deep truth about the ability of God (or the gods) to transcend human expectation. The early Christians were willing to risk their lives not for the arguments about Mary’s sexual experience, which is no-one’s business (as her son makes clear, later, when he reduces to silence those who would stone a woman to death for her sexual activities), but about the ability of God to create resurrection-hope and justice-hope and aroha-hope through the life that passed through her womb. Actually neither they nor I had any problem believing that the God who flung stars across heaven could create (new) life in a virgin’s womb, but the greater issue was that their lives had been transformed from darkness to light by their encounter in worship and fellowship with the child of that womb, the Risen Lord of Easter.

Haere ra, Madiba

 

The cost of being dead is that we are made into whatever image those who survive us desire. I have sat through a eulogy or two in my time, but one of the first I ever heard was for a friend who died on my motorbike back in 1978. At least I think it was: the angelic creature who was laid to rest according to the celebrant bore no resemblance to the hard living, petty criminalizing, womanising, chemically enhanced friend I knew. Although I was an atheist at the time I swore I would never give a eulogy so false and empty—never expecting it would one day become my day job (though rightly or wrongly these days the celebrant doesn’t often give the eulogy). I swore too that the eulogy at my funeral would be honest: the trouble is I can’t do much about that one.

Nor could Nelson Mandela. He cannot control now what image he is recreated into. Saint? Socialist radical? Terrorist? Freedom fighter? I have  read those descriptions and a myriad more in recent days, as the entire world it seems (except North Korea, which has other worries) attempts to recreate Madiba in its own chosen image. We all do it: I like to emphasize Mandela’s faith and courage, but I bet when pushed he, like all prophets, could be unpleasant, cranky, doubt-filled: all the things we don’t want a saint to be. I suspect saints and prophets are the people we most don’t want to share or lives with: Mother Theresa, when once a woman was complaining to her about the person’s husband, replied “you should try being married to God.”

I’ve met a few genuine saints. The best of them made me feel bigger, better, more complete for their passing through my life: they focussed on me in such a way that I felt enriched, enlivened, invigorated. In many cases I never met them again. My life though had received new impetus, a new imprint of the breathings of God.

I have no idea what Mandela was like. I know though that he touched and transformed a nation that might otherwise have descended into brutality and bloodshed. Of course his legacy is not perfect: as I will often remind myself and you, we are as yet, as theologians liked to say, “caught between the already and the not yet.” The lives that pass through and enrich ours, whether we know them for ten minutes or a lifetime, are lent to us from God’s future, lent as it were to remind us of the magnificences of the eternities that dwell ahead, where lion shall lay down with lamb, and we shall learn war no more. In theological languages they are beatific glimpses, signposts to the road ahead.

I have no idea what Mandela was like. I know though that my life has been enriched because I lived in two centuries in which he lived. For that I am deeply thankful to God.

Bach, Belioz, Bieber

Justin Bieber is not necessarily a high rating figure in the discourse  (fancy word for “conversation”, but perhaps with a bit more implied) of a cathedral faith community. Bach, yes, Berlioz maybe, Bieber perhaps not. At the moment the 19 year old Canadian fading heart-throb might be briefly considering entering a monastery, though perhaps that is a long shot: devotion to the daily offices of prayer and indeed the rigours of community living have not to date been the hallmark of his public persona.

In fact at the moment, if my internet feeds are to be believed, it may be lawyers’ chambers rather than the monastery that most absorb his attention. A photo of him leaning over and lobbing a large wad of saliva on the heads of his adoring fans is currently viral in pixelland.  Bieber’s image minders (and, more ambivalently, Snopes.com) are in full swing assuring the e-world the event never happened, but no matter what they say there is a tsunami of opinion, however misguided, that it did. Spin is everything, of course, and we will never know.

Or care? Maybe not. The fame of the “legend in their own lunch hour” (with apologies to Barry Sheehan) of pin-up pop stars is by definition not long-lasting. Donny Osmond and David Cassidy are hardly household names these days (though Cassidy’s fellow Partridge Family character Susan Dey was the unrequited love of my life for at least a year). Some stagger through life from catastrophe to catastrophe, including premature death. Others, perhaps against the odds, seize their lives and make something less ephemeral out of their fame—Shirley Temple is one of the better examples of the latter. Who knows what spitting (or not) falling star Justin Bieber or twerking falling star Miley Cyrus will make of their challenged lives. We could do worse than to breathe a prayer for them.

The last suggestion is less fanciful than it might seem. These fantastical media creations are human beings, trapped in savage attention cycles that they feed on as fast as the media feed on them (the classic “symbiotic cycle” of destruction). They are humans—and while the media speculate on whether Miley Cyrus is bitterly angry with Jennifer Lopez (I wouldn’t know either of them if I tripped over them) we the public feed the frenzy by reading the magazines and watching the shows. Ultimately, when a media creation lies dead on the floor of a lonely motel room it is at least in some small part us, the entertained, the speculators, who have blood on our hands, for we fed the troll-demons that killed them. This is, in my books, what St Anselm meant when he wrote “you do not know how great a thing sin is.”

But, momentarily, the greater issue here is one of contrast. Bach, Belioz, Bieber … the world of Anglican liturgy and music, even of preaching and teaching has often ignored the ephemeral (temporary) and rejoiced in high culture—an Australian former dean and retired bishop referred to this as “salvation by good taste.” I defend high liturgical and ecclesiastical culture to the hilt, but it must always only ever be as a vehicle of deeper gospel truths, the truths of hope and redemption that can transform the most frightened human heart into a home for the risen Christ. The ephemeral is terribly—well, ephemeral—but never let us forget that it is to the Justin Biebers and Miley Cyruses, as well as the august and distinguished purveyors of high culture, that we are called to reach.

Liberate the Incarcerate

One of the many blessings of my new diocese (Waiapu, Aotearoa New Zealand) is the contractual clause that says clergy have two weeks “leave” in which to get house, home and life re-established after moving to a new position (or “cure”). Last week I took two of those allotted days to attempt to free my car, the first of two en route here, from the clutches of the importation bureaucrats. To be fair, I totally admire the work done by Customs and MAF—any heroin secreted in my glove box or crocodiles hiding in my exhaust pipe deserve to be arrested dockside.

Registration of imported vehicles is on the other hand a nightmare of Orwellian proportions (as it happens I am reading Nineteen  Eighty-Four). I carefully checked all available websites before committing myself to transporting the cars from Darwin, but could glean little. My removalists assured me it was a cinch: expensive, but a cinch. A chief wallah at Wellington’s Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association assured me all was well and that my vehicles could be imported. Bring it on: I handed our cars over to disappear into the bowels of various ships.

Reams of paper, electronic and otherwise, see-sawed back and forth between Yours Truly, removalists in Darwin, removalists in Wellington, Customs, and MAF. Passports, ownership papers, compliance plates, VIN numbers and countless more were exchanged in glorious Technicolor, until last week I was told the first car had been released to Vehicle Testing Station Ltd. With glee I girded up my loins and, late on Wednesday, drove 300+ kilometres to Lower Hutt (via Raumati) to finalize the trans-ditch manoeuvres. I was armed and ready to replace a few damaged parts (windscreens and brake lights suffer the ravages of time), looking forward at last to driving my car home to Napier.

Not so. Vehicle Testing informed me that, although they had a copy of my proof of ownership and my passport, this was not enough. They had to see the originals. On Thursday I drove back to Napier, collected Passport and Proof, and made it back to Lower Hutt, ten minutes before closing. I drove back to my bed in Raumati for the night, 750 kilometres tired. All was well. Except that they forgot to photocopy said items. Back I went to Lower Hutt (I’ve always loved the Paekakariki Hill road …). They asked why I hadn’t researched my vehicle before I came. I told them I had and that the Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association had told me it was fine. They said that no-one in NZ is authorized to give indications as to the viability of imports without eyeballing the car. I asked how, then, I was supposed to research viability—and they assured me it wasn’t possible, but I should do it anyway. I reached for my migraine tablets.

As it happens, and because I was so obsequious, they are granting me leave to import the vehicle … eventually. In a week or two, after they have stripped and checked it they will release it—at a cost—to drive alongside lowered hoon cars with nitrogen assisted clutches that scare the pants off all living things, alongside cars lowered so much they have to stop and drive diagonally over hedgehog carcasses, and alongside cars with flashing underbody lights. Fear not: I will one day drive my rather dull 4WD ute up Madeira Road. One day.

In the meantime MAF are very excited by one of our umbrellas, and many more days will be added to the 80 already past before our luggage finally arrives. And as for the other car …