Advent reflection

Israel and Palestine today are lands of contrasts, where past and present are juxtaposed in contrasts which are sometimes incongruous and sometimes profound. This lithograph shows a view of Jerusalem from approximately 1890 and shows the essentially rural nature of the area surrounding the Old City at that time.

Nazareth is now a large city, where once, at the time of Christ, it was an obscure village. The Basilica of the Annunciation is a modern Roman Catholic church built on the foundations of an earlier Crusader church. The church has been built over the excavated remains of buildings from the settlement of Jesus’ day and incorporates into this modern building the ancient Grotto of the Annunciation.

At Bethlehem the Church of the Nativity stands alongside a busy central square. Bethlehem is a town relient on tourism, where its holy sites are alongside the food outlets, accommodation and souvenir shops which tourists require and which support the local economy.

The Basilica of the Annunciation straddles and shields remains from ancient Nazareth. At the centre of this modern church are remains of earlier churches and the ancient Grotto of the Annunciation which is thought to be the location where the Annunciation occurred. At the heart, therefore, of the tourist trails and visits there is worship, piety and devotion.

The same mix is found in Bethlehem, where tourists and pilgrims can queue for two hours or more to see or to kiss the site that is traditionally thought to be the location of Christ’s birth and the site of the manger. Among the busyness of this crowded space people kneel in devotion to worship Christ.

The humble events of Jesus’ conception and birth have proved inspirational, spreading around the world, bringing millions to the holy sites and leading to the creation of great art and architecture. The Basilica of the Annunciation is a stunning example of modernist architecture which is sensitive to the site and which enhances worship. Artworks in mosaic, stained glass and stone have been collected there from around the world to tell the story of the Annunciation in a truly global fashion.

I was privileged to see these images as part of the East London Three Faiths Forum's recent Tour of the Holy Land. While in Nazareth with this group, I read the following sonnet about Mary as part of our experience of seeing and reflecting on these sacred sites.

The poet, Malcolm Guite, says of Mary: ‘Mary has been given many titles down the ages and some Christians have disagreed with one another bitterly about her. But equally, in every age and every church she has been, for many Christians, a sign of hope and an inspiration. Her earliest ‘title’, agreed throughout the church in the first centuries of our faith, before the divisions of East and West, Catholic and Protestant, was Theotokos, which means God-Bearer. she is the prime God-Bearer, bearing for us in time the One who was begotten in eternity, and every Christian after her seeks to become in some small way a God-bearer, one whose ‘yes’ to God means that Christ is made alive and fruitful in the world through our flesh and our daily lives, is born and given to another.’

You bore for me the One who came to bless
And bear for all and make the broken whole.
You heard His call and in your open ‘yes’
You spoke aloud for every living soul.
Oh gracious Lady, child of your own child,
Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,
Call me again, for I am lost, and wild
Waves surround me now. On this dark sea
Shine as a star and call me to the shore.
Open the door that all my sins would close
And hold me in your garden. Let me share
The prayer that folds the petals of the Rose.
Enfold me too in Love’s last mystery
And bring me to the One you bore for me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Malcolm Guite & Steve Bell - The Singing Bowl & Birth Of A Song.

East London Three Faiths Forum Tour of the Holy Land: Day 3

Simon Hill led a communion service on Masada during which I shared the following thoughts on the incarnation, reflecting on the significance of our previous day's visit to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity:

Jesus was born to be Emmanuel – God with us. That is what the incarnation, “the union of the human and the divine in the life of a humble Jewish carpenter,” is all about. As John 1. 14 says, in the contemporary translation of the Bible called The Message: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.”

Through Christ’s birth, God has entered our world and moved into our neighbourhood. In Christ, God has identified with us by becoming one of us. The entire movement of the Bible - from God walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through God having a tent (the tabernacle) and then a house (the Temple) so he could live with the Israelites - leads up to this moment in history when God becomes flesh and blood and enters our world. That is why Jesus is also called Emmanuel which means God is with us.

What does it mean for God to be with us in the way? It means that God becomes one of us. He becomes a human being experiencing the whole trajectory of human existence from conception through birth, puberty, adulthood to death including all that we experience along the way in terms of relationships, experiences, emotions and temptations. Rowan Williams has said that: "Jesus, the Son of God, … knew what it meant to be without wealth, he knew what it meant to grow up disadvantaged, he knew what it meant to turn to God in prayer, faith and hope.”

Through his incarnation and nativity Christ comes into the messiness of human life, as a human being, to experience all that we experience for himself. The betrayals, dismay, distress, depression, illness, pain, insanity, loss of hope, loneliness, homelessness, danger and despair that many of us experience at periods in our lives and which some experience as their everyday life. Christ comes to understand all this and to bear it on his shoulders to God, through his death on the cross, in order that, like him, we too can rise to new life and ascend to the life of God himself. “Lord, who came down to share our plight / Lift them into your love and light.” This is the hope held out to us through the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; that he was born into poverty, exile, danger, stigma for our sake, in order to reach out to and rescue us.

God, in Jesus, “had to become like his people in every way, in order to be their faithful and merciful High Priest in his service to God, so that the people's sins would be forgiven. And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself was tempted and suffered” (Hebrews 2. 17 & 18). “... we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God — Jesus, the Son of God. Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence, then, and approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it” (Hebrews 4. 14 – 16).

This is the wonderful result of love coming down at Christmas - of Christ’s nativity and incarnation – we can have confidence to “approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.” Lord, who came down to share our plight, lift us all into your love and light.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Rutter - Love Came Down At Christmas.

East London Three Faiths Forum trip to the Holy Land (3)

Today we went through the wall to Bethlehem where we queued to go into the Grotto of the Nativity. Like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre yesterday, this was an incredibly busy place combining devotion with tourism. We also saw one Banksy's graffiti designs - a dove of peace with a bullet-proof vest - close to the wall itself.

We then followed the wall for part of the way to Hebron, passing some of the settlements in Area C, before arriving at the Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron. This is a shrine complex mainly built by Herod, with additions by the Crusaders, which is now houses a Mosque and a Synagogue. The Jewish members of our group visited the synagogue, while the rest of us went to visit the shrines to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. Then we all went into the Old Town for a short time.

Lastly, the Christian members of the group went to St George's Cathedral in Jerusalem for Evening Prayer.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jehan Titelouze - Urbs Jerusalem.