With poetry and music for Christmas
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Every year to prepare for this service I sit down and read the familiar Bible stories. I read the prophecies in the Old Testament, the message of the angel Gabriel to Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in a byre, the angels and the shepherds, and the visit of the Magi. I see what comes to the surface, what themes strike me across the texts. And this year what I noticed again and again was leadership. We may not need to have done the Psychology exam PS3038 Cognition on Tuesday to work out what’s going on.
We’re nearly two years into the pandemic, a mere 4% of my lifetime, but closer to 10% of many students. We’ve just seen the 26th Conference of the Parties meant to tackle the climate emergency. We are in the midst of humanitarian disasters caused by war in Ethiopia and Yemen, let alone the trauma and pain of Afghanistan. Issues around leadership are inescapable. We can’t help but see how power and prejudice, wealth and fear shape our world and those in office. And I hope, if you were sitting IR4548 Force and Statecraft on Tuesday, you found hopeful ways to answer. But I confess that sometimes, despite my usual cheerfulness, I’ve found it hard to stay positive this year. Has your chaplain finally, on the north side of 50 years old, become a prophet of doom. Am I channelling Private Fraser from Dad’s Army – Doomed, we’re a’ doomed.
So what came to the surface as I pondered the scriptures?
Well, the Old Testament prophet Micah envisages one who is coming to rule in Israel, long-promised, from ancient days. You could say, in this town with its famous golf club, a Royal and Ancient king from Bethlehem. But Micah says this ruler will feed his flock – rather than wielding drivers and irons, it’s a shepherd’s staff he’ll hold. And the hallmark of his reign will be peace and security, to the ends of the earth. It’s quite a prophecy, and a massive responsibility on a single leader. Perhaps Stormzy understands that in our age – Heavy is the head that wears the crown…
It’s the same theme in the next prophecy we heard read earlier, from the angel Gabriel to Mary. Now Mary was probably a bit younger than our youngest first-year, and Gabriel’s words weren’t quite the usual conversation with an adviser of studies. She’s to have a child, and call him Jesus. And then Gabriel talks about leadership. The Lord God will give Jesus the “throne of his ancestor David.” And “he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever. And of his kingdom there will be no end.”
It’s the promise of the birth of the king of Israel, the Messiah, to this otherwise ordinary girl. But it also sounds like the beginning of a dynasty, like the Plantagenets or Tudors, the Stuarts or the Windsors. Perhaps the Nazareths, with Luke their Hilary Mantel. No longer Royal and Ancient: now Royal and Everlasting.
Earlier this year, St Andrews played host to a visit from two genuine members of the House of Windsor. Did you hear that William and Catherine celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in Forgans? Did you gather outside the restaurant when it spread on social media? Did you wait for a glimpse of them in the rain on the Scores the next morning? My role was to introduce them to a student interfaith leader who led them into a discussion with a further seven students to discuss how students of different faiths had responded to the Pandemic. I may only have met them for 3.7 nerve-wracking seconds. But my mother still got a framed photograph of the smiling couple looking my way. Royal and listening.
When we hear the familiar story of the birth of Jesus through the filter of leadership, the writers’ brilliant sense of irony becomes apparent.
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
Earthly power is on show: an Emperor who ruled all the world or wanted his world to believe it. A governor, dependent on him, who did his bidding in the provinces far from Rome.
Joseph and Mary had no power to resist, even though Mary was heavily pregnant. To Bethlehem they went, and the time came for Mary to deliver her child, this Messiah, this one who would reign, whose kingdom would never end. And there was nowhere left in Bethlehem but a cattle-shed, a place that season for rough sleepers, and probably a ridiculous price at that. Royal and precarious.
But Luke knows that this vulnerable birth doesn’t end in an obscure life, and so we hear the words of the angels to the shepherds. Why angels? (That’s another sermon I preached at Christmas 2018 called Angel Delight – which I can send you on request…) Why shepherds? Remember Micah’s hope, that the ruler from Bethlehem would feed his flock. These song-shocked shepherds were drawn to one of their own, the Messiah, the Lord. And then the further song:
Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and peace on earth among those whom he favours.
Royal and peace-making.
For Luke, the contrast is clear: between a brutal and capricious imperial power in a Roman palace, or the peace-making authority of human baby lying on a bed of straw. Sometimes it’s those who are not Christian understand this well. Gandhi said, I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.
Matthew draws this out with one final contrast. The Magi, sometimes called kings, followed the star to pay homage to the new-born king of the Jews. But they did this, we are told, “in the time of King Herod;” they were called into Herod’s presence (or perhaps commanded), and they heard his words asking them to find the child so that he could pay him homage. These of course were words of deceit, born of Herod’s fear at losing his power. A ruled who lied, a leader who deceived. Can you see why certain themes came to the surface in my reading this year? Anyway, the Magi continued on to Bethlehem and saw the true king, a child on his mother’s knee, and worshipped him, kneeling, giving of their goods, and returning changed. Royal and true.
I’d like to read a poem now by U. A. Fanthorpe which suggests the real gifts the child got. It’s called The Wicked Fairy at the Manger
My gift for the child:
No wife, kinds, home;
No money sense. Unemployable.
Friends, yes. But the wrong sort –
The workshy, women, wimps,
Petty infringers of the law, persons
With notifiable diseases
Poll tax collectors, tarts;
The bottom rung.
His end?
I think we’ll make it
Public, prolonged, painful.
Right, said the baby. That was roughly
What we had in mind.
Well, having explored these stories, I find I’m no longer so filled with doom. And perhaps I’m not alone. I know that many people in this church today are people of faith – Christian and otherwise. I also know that many will not be, drawn here for all sorts of different reasons. That’s fine – all are welcome. But I think there can be a particularly sharp problem for people of faith, in the pandemic, famines, humanitarian crises, and in the climate crisis above all – where is God? How can God let such horrors be?
And what can make this all the harder, even impossible to square, is the sort of religion which emphasises the power of Deity, with prayers that start Almighty God, or with an emphasis on omnipotence, or miraculous intervention, a sort of God who zaps some problems from on high. Or the sort of Christian approach which (and I borrow the words here of Richard Coles, radio and TV presenter and lovably mediocre contestant on Strictly Come Dancing) which sees Jesus as an individual conquering hero before whom the world quails and falls. The sort of divinity who is Mr President of the Universe, above pain, untouched by suffering, dwelling in splendid isolation except for meetings in the Situation Room about what to zap. Royal and remote.
But as Graham Greene puts it in The Quiet American, set in Viet Nam, It’s always the same wherever one goes – it’s not the most powerful rulers who have the happiest populations. Not our Presidents and Prime Ministers, nor our gods. The older I get, the more I see God in the manger, a near-powerless infant. The more I see God as a shepherd, trying to look after sheep with little more power than his voice and the hope of persuasion. The more I see God in a girl who accepted responsibility with courage.
In other words, I don’t see God as offering just another power source akin to the rulers who gathered in Glasgow. Rather, this year, I sense the divine as a completely different form of, what, leadership? Is leadership even the right term? Maybe servanthood is better.
Loving, affirming and forgiving.
Persuading, influencing and inspiring.
Sacrificing, laying down authority, giving up power.
If not royal and ancient, then royal and modern?
Maybe, though the contemporary world shows plenty of examples of dodgy leadership. Royal I can keep – a necessary alternative to earthly kings.
And so in St Andrews, and who knows, maybe elsewhere, the Messiah is R&A.
Royal and affirming
Royal and altruistic
Royal and accepting
Royal and assuring
Royal and abiding
END