Dear Friends,
‘We read to know we’re not alone’, words spoken by Anthony Hopkins in his role as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands. Getting on for these last two years, reading has been the salvation of many. Summed up for me most succinctly thus, ‘Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.’ As the likelihood of yet another period of lockdown seems increasingly inevitable, these words resonate. – I know we might substitute Television or Radio for Reading; both equally valuable in their own way – Nevertheless, there is something about ‘Reading’. The author, Hannah Fielding, comments, ‘…
When we read, we connect to people. We are with the author of the book as we read; we are with the characters in the story; we are with all the other readers who have read this book too. We are not alone…’ Why this observation in particular? Well, during our annual Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols, every year (bar one), it has been my privilege to read the 9th Lesson, The Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 1 – 14. And as I think about reading in general, and then relate my thoughts to that specific ‘reading’, I get it. The genius of the author is such that he causes his readers to realise that precisely because of what it is we are reading, that we are ‘not alone’. He paints a picture in words that takes us back in time to when there was ‘no time’, ‘no thing’, nothing. And then, there was a ‘moment in time’ and ‘everything’, ‘everyone’, ‘each one of us’ came to be. Who we are has been, is, and forever will be defined, described, determined by the One who is the ‘first cause’, the One who caused us to be. And that same ‘One’ – whom John describes as ‘The Word’, ‘The Logos’ – has become as one of us. In so doing it has been determined that we might know that we are ‘not alone’. We are, potentially at least, united with ‘The Word made Flesh’, the ‘God-Man’, with Jesus as together with Him we know ourselves to be ‘children of God’. And everyone who ‘reads’ the passage in this way – whoever, whenever, wherever – we are as one. None of us was made to be alone, none of us need be alone. Hence Matthew’s profound insightfulness when he described Jesus in terms of Him being Emmanuel – ‘God with us’ – He was to be named ‘Jesus’. He was and is and always will be ‘God with us’. That is why what we know as ‘Christmas’ is nothing if it not fundamentally Theological – about God – and that is why a secular Christmas is an idolatry, indeed, more than that, a blasphemy against God…’…No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human.
Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology. “God is revealed in flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ — that is the holy mystery that theology came into being to protect and preserve…’ (Bonhoeffer)…
We are not alone, we need never be alone.
The real message of Christmas
…Enjoy…