The opening words of John’s gospel will be
read at services the world over today.
It is one of the great Christmas readings. It conveys to me a sense of awe and wonder at
the immensity of God’s creation and the glory of God that is beyond our
capacity to understand.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God. All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being. What has come into being in
him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and
the darkness did not overcome it.
It’s one of those things I find so good to
do – to go out into the open, up to the hills, gaze at the stars – somehow it
puts things in a different perspective, helps you to get things into
proportion. Where I wonder did I get my
enthusiasm for the wonders of the universe?
I guess I would have been about 10 when I was given my first astronomy
book – it certainly caught my imagination.
The Observer’s Book of Astronomy – and the author? Patrick Moore.
19th December saw the fortieth
anniversary of the return of the last of the Apollo Missions to the Moon. It had been a remarkable achievement – and it
brought us all a new perspective on planet earth.
Chrstopher Riley, writing in the Observer
last week, told of the occasion when Apollo 9 astronaut, Rusty Schweickart was
doing a space walk when his camera jammed and for five minutes he had nothing
else to do but look 160 miles beneath him at Planet Earth.
Schweickart's mind-expanding view and the
epiphany that it triggered led him to vividly appreciate the insanity of humans
fighting over borders that were invisible to him from up there. "Hundreds
of people in the Middle East killing each
other over some imaginary line that you're not even aware of, that you can't
see," he recounted. "And from where you see it, the thing is a whole,
and it's so beautiful," he remembered of his view of Earth. "You wish
you could take one in each hand, one from each side in the various conflicts, and
say, 'Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What's
important?'"
A wonderful sentiment – but it begs the
question how can we make such a difference?
That takes me back to that Christmas
reading and the heart of the Christmas story.
. And the Word became
flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a
father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
Right at the outset Luke notices something
about Jesus that gives us a clue. Lost
in the temple at 12 his parents find him among the teachers and scholars of the
day and he is ‘listening’ and asking them questions.
Jesus listens.
One of the many highlights of that
remarkable Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games came well after midnight – it
moved me to tears. For the previous week
we had been on holiday and we had managed to watch or listen into a remarkable
cycle of all of Beethoven’s nine symphonies at the Proms. The evening of the Opening Ceremony began for
us with the remarkably powerful ninth symphony and the ode to joy. The conductor, Daniel Barenboim, and the
orchestra the West Eatern Divan
orchestra. An initiative of the Jewish
Daniel Barenboim and the Palestian Christian Edward Said to bring together in an orchestra musicians from
across the religious divide, Jewish, Christian, Muslim.
The key to playing in an orchestra is to
listen to each other. Not just listen,
but actively listen. One thing I noticed
was the way the players engaged not only with the conductor, but with each
other – at times in those televised proms it felt as if the players were in conversation with each other
as they played. Remarkable.
How wonderful after midnight at the end of
that exhilarating Opening Ceremony to see Daniel Barenboim as one of those
carrying in the Olympic Flag.
That’s it.
The key to breaking down those barriers is to listen.
At this Christmas may we know the blessing
of seeing the world from the perspective of the wonder and awe of the immensity
of God’s creation. May we know the
blessing of listening and breaking barriers down.
But there’s something more involved in such
blessing.
It’s been great opening the windows on an
advent calendar in ourhouse this year. I
have been following through Advent a set of prayer meditations put together by
the Church of Scotland from the churches of Palestine
and Israel – as they appeal
to us in churches throughout the world to be active in our support of their
commitment to peace and justice in the land of Jesus
There’s no 25th window on my
Advent calendar. There is a 25th
meditation in my book of prayers.
It is an invitation to us all in churches
throughout the world from the churches of Bethlehem
and Palestine
Jesus was in the business of offering
blessing to people.
It’s so easy to think of blessing as
something passive.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
justice for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you when you are persecuted.
Elias Chacour is a remarkable Palestinian
Christian, Archbishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. He has devoted a lifetime to seeking to
bridge the divide and bring Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish, Christian and
Muslim together in understanding of each other.
“How could I go to a persecuted young man
in a Palestinian refugee camp, for instance, and say, “Blessed are those who
mourn for they shall be comforted.” Or
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven?” That man would
revile me, say neither I nor my God understood his plight, and he would be
right.
Elias Chacour speaks the language Jesus
spoke, Aramaic, Syriac, a language that survives in small pockets in the middle
east.
“When I understand Jesus’ words in the
Aramaic [they mean something very different], I translate like this:
“Get up, go ahead, do something, move you
who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied.
“Get up, go ahead, do something, move you
peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God.
To me, says Elias Chacour, this reflects
Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately. I can hear him saying, “Get your hands dirty
to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and
murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless.”
Christianity is not passive, but active, energetic,
alive, going beyond despair.”
Come
all you Faithful: An Advent Journey with the Palestinian People (Church of
Scotland and Christian Aid, 2012)
Christmas invites us to see the world from
a new perspective, to listen to one another and above all to get up, go ahead,
do something, move to make a difference in the world.
It’s worth reflecting what is it we can do
to make just such a difference?
1 comment:
Players in an orchestra do listen to each other, watch each other and the conductor, and just as you say, it's absolutely part of the music that it should often sound like a conversation.
On conflict: the French poet Victor Hugo wrote poetry with a similar angle on that subject, especially 'memory of the night of the 4th'.
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