View From The Pew
by Gerry Hunter
(Posted Jan. 7th, 2000).
I’m old enough to remember a talented vocalist names Jo Stafford, and the work of her husband, the talented songwriter Paul Weston. I’m also old enough to have those memories fade. Except, that is, for the work they did as "Jonathan and Darlene Edwards." He played piano; she sang. They had an uncanny knack for just missing beats, falling a bit flat on notes - if they didn’t leave them out entirely, and getting badly, but subtly, out of synch. The late Clyde Gilmour, who played their "music" from time to time on his CBC radio show, once gave his listeners a neat suggestion for how to use their "music." He suggested that, in the middle of a cocktail party, the host should put on one of their albums to play, and then wait and see how long it took for some of the guests to notice that something was terribly amiss. At a Christmas gathering of Christian believers, one could do the same thing with Bishop Michael Ingham’s 2000 Christmas message.
Let us first consider delight, an appropriate thing to do at Christmas. Let us now consider Vishnu, a member, it seems, of a trinity. That, too, seems appropriate. Let’s consider his incarnation as Lord Krishna. Incarnation seems to fit. But what are we to make of his taking sides in a family feud that lead to the slaughter of one side (the Kauravas), and a curse by their matriarch, leading to more slaughter? Somehow, it’s hard to delight in Krishna’s fate - being mistaken for a deer and killed by a hunter. Falls a bit flat compared to the birth of Jesus Christ, doesn’t it?
Perhaps if we turn to Islam? It is, after all, monotheistic. (So is Christianity, but that note got missed.) However, it is not at all evident how we can harmoniously blend the though of Jesus as a prophet like Mohammed with a call to obedience. The writer’s reference to virtue doesn’t seem to help much here.
What of the theme of hope? Christmas is surely a time to reflect on hope fulfilled, in a manner that no one would anticipate, and no story-teller would invent. Yet here we find not reference to fulfillment, but instead to denial and expectation, accompanied, it seems, by a call to look past Jesus to God. It all comes off a bit like playing "Another One Bites the Dust" as the recessional at a wedding.
Now Christmas, for millennia, has been about the unique incarnation of God as a human. Well, as we would expect, these themes of uniqueness and incarnation do work their way into this number. But the uniqueness is bestowed by us in this particular arrangement, not intrinsic to the event commemorated. And the incarnation is of virtues, not the Divine Nature. I remember a Christmas concert (when they still called them that) at my son’s high school, about ten years ago. The band was playing "Memories" from the musical "Cats." The drummer could do everything a drummer should have to do, except keep time. The cymbal crash at the start of the concluding crescendo was loud, and ringing, and a half a beat early. It had about the same effect on the audience (and the music teacher, who has since moved on to guidance counseling) as this passage has on the believing Christian reader.
With all the right thoughts mentioned, and all the right names dropped, why would one possibly feel uneasy from this message? Perhaps because it isn’t a theist message, with God being portrayed through themes of virtues, not personality? Perhaps because it is all just a story to the writer, with its meaning being only what he and we give it? There is no echo here of an historic event, where the major participants were counted in a Roman census. (The later reference to an event in the piece is strangely dissonant to its chosen key.) Perhaps that is because the writer, on his own showing, claims the title "Christian" because of what he sees, and not because it is true. It is quite a different thing to "see God everywhere" than to acknowledge Jesus Christ as "the way, the truth, and the life." But in fairness to the writer, he acknowledges in his last book that, indeed, he does not.
Just as the choice of themes and their treatment show consistency on the part of the writer, so do the conclusions he draws. We see a Jesus who is particular, but hardly unique or intrinsically special. We see a truth that is decisive because we make it so, not because it comes from God. Indeed, we have the image of a God who "acted decisively once for all," but who can’t quite seem to make up his mind, and is acting willy-nilly on other places over and over again to supposedly the same effect. We have a Jesus who came to lead those "who follow him toward life in all its fullness," but who has going for him only that with which the writer sees fit to endow him. The baby born on Christmas will come again as the judge of all. Could the baby imaged in this piece?
There is good news in Christmas, just as Jo Stafford and Paul Weston could make good music. And I would no more trade that good news - that gospel - for the news in this message than I would trade those musicians’ best work for that of "Jonathan and Darlene Edwards." They could really sing, write, and play. And the Christmas story of Jesus, the one and only Son, really is good news.
http://newwestminster.anglican.org/News/Default.asp?Year=2000&Month=12&Article=1
Bishop Michael's Christmas Message - Christmas is Good News for All
At Christmas we celebrate God's appearance on earth in Jesus Christ, and the Church proclaims this joy to all the world. But Christians are not the only ones who believe in divine incarnation, that God has taken on human form.
Hindus, for example, believe God appears many times in human form. One of the Hindu trinity of gods is called Vishnu, who is reputed to have ten different incarnational forms or 'avatars.' To Westerners the most famous is Lord Krishna, a playful deity usually shown with a musical instrument while dancing or leading others in dance. There is an element of delight in Hindu worship. God is to be enjoyed in movement, laughter and music, and sometimes also in detachment. Christians know this too.
To Muslims, on the other hand, the very notion of incarnation is impossible. Islam is a strictly monotheistic faith with a 'high' doctrine of God who is wholly other than the world. Muslims honour Jesus as a prophet of God, a man through whom God's truth and compassion was revealed, but they cannot see him as an incarnation of God. Not even Mohammed is thought to have been divine. In Islamic belief divinity and humanity are hierarchical realities, and the task of humanity is to become subordinate to God's revealed law. Obedience is a strong virtue in Islam. And for Christians too.
However, Jews certainly believe in the possibility of incarnation. The expectation of Messiah is first of all a Jewish belief, and while Christians are convinced this hope was fulfilled in Jesus, for the Jewish religion the Messiah is yet to appear. The promised resolution of all things in heaven and earth (which is part of messianic belief) is not yet accomplished, and so Jews continue to look to God for justice and the final resolution of human history. Hope is a great strength of Judaism. Christian hope has its foundations here.
Christians are unique in holding to belief in a single incarnation of God. Each time we say the Creed we profess our faith in the "only-begotten" Son of God, and we speak of "his one oblation of himself once offered" in the Eucharist. In Jesus, Christians see God fully revealed, meaning that all we can imagine of God is incarnated for us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In him the eternal Word of God, the Logos, was made flesh and dwelt among us in fullness of grace and truth.
At the moment of this single incarnation, according to one sacred story, the skies were filled with angels bearing a message of peace and love. In Bethlehem, peace and love were revealed as the very nature of God, and this nature was poured out for all the world in the life of a single child. Those who believe this are invited to incarnate these same virtues in their own lives. Christians are to show the world how to follow the way of reconciliation and kindness. People of other faiths can do this too.
I see no reason not to honour the Islamic belief in the absoluteness of God. Muslims are an example to me of how not to reduce God to something merely trivial and worldly. And I find I must admire the Hindu capacity to see God everywhere, in variety and abundance, without the need to limit God to any one idea or dogma. Hinduism reminds me of God's essential freedom from human thought. And from my Jewish friends I must learn to live in hope for a better world, always expecting God to act, at any moment, to fulfil the divine promises. Judaism reminds me not to dwell in the past.
The reason I am a Christian is not because there is anything fundamentally wrong with these other ways of believing. It is rather that in Jesus Christ I can see the absoluteness of God in the flesh. It is no longer a doctrine, but a human reality. In Jesus Christ I have a glimpse of the nature of divinity itself and, once seen, it is now apparent to me everywhere. Because of his particularity, I can see God's universality. And because God has acted decisively once for all, I can have confidence that God will always act both now and forever. My hope in the future is founded not on things to come, but on God's action already taken.
There is something quite particular about this, but nothing exclusive. What God has done for the world in Jesus does not negate God's actions in other places and times. How could we presume to limit God? But for Christians it is the decisive truth, the event that gives us our purpose and identity, the basis of our hope and joy. At Christmas time we celebrate the singularity of God's appearing in a life of self-giving love and the simultaneous announcement of peace and good will to all humanity and to creation itself. Other deeds of God I have no need to deny, but they have no claim on my life as powerful as this one. Jesus came to free me, and you, and anyone else who follows him toward life in all its fullness.
That's good news for everyone. I wish you a blessed Christmas.
+Michael Ingham
Bishop of New Westminster
Vancouver, BC