AN2023 Nostalgia in the Ancient Near East c. 4BCE
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
There is something inescapably nostalgic about this evening. It is an Alumni Carol Service after all, with many if not most the congregation graduates, people who have been students at St Andrews and who are now no longer there. Many are gathering tonight to share memories, perhaps even to re-live some of those beautiful moments of your younger selves.
For life in London and around is not quite the same reality as student days by the East Sands and Wests Sands, Castlecliffe and Purdie, the Library and the Lade Braes. There are the early starts for one thing, to get to work on time – unlike those lazy mornings before a first class at 12. There are the countless meetings that cannot be avoided – unlike those optional lectures which grew less and less essential as the semester rolled on. Team leaders are not quite as forthcoming with extensions as your favourite tutor was. Wasn’t St Andrews wonderful, throwing some shapes at 601, or the Lizard, or the Boys Brigade Hall, or the Old Union on Butts Wynd – take your pick depending on your era. Mind you, with rather more than three streets in London, it is possible to spend a day here without bumping into a couple of your exes between your flat and your first meeting.
And of course, this very service is nostalgic. A University Carol Service, a packed church, a smattering of gowns, Adeste fideles and the after-party. Tonight surely calls to mind services at Sallies, St Leonard’s and Holy Trinity. In fact, to prepare for this evening, I asked three former Chaplains for their memories of Christmas in the University. Iain Whyte remembers students spending the whole day of the Carol Service making mince pies with his late wife Isabel at the then Chaplain’s House on Gillespie Terrace, which were scoffed up by the hundred or so people who packed into the house after the service. Douglas Galbraith recalls the Carols by Candlelight Service on Christmas Eve in St Leonard’s Chapel. After the service, he served lambswool accompanied by wigs. Lambswool was a warm ale poured over pieces of apple, with sugar, nutmeg, and ginger added. Wigs were small cakes made from a lightly spiced and sweetened bread dough, with nutmeg and caraway seeds. These were old recipes, associated with wassailing – and again, made in the Chaplain’s House. Finally, Jamie Walker, my immediate predecessor, has fond memories of packing about 750 students into St Salvator’s Chapel (usual capacity 300) for the University Carol Service – before our Health and Safety Office took a dim view. People were seated on virtually every space on the floor, in the choir loft among the choir, around the communion table, on window-sills, on pulpit steps – many dressed for the Christmas Ball which followed later that evening. And who knows, some preparatory wassailing may even have happened before the service.
But isn’t Christmas itself deeply nostalgic? For many of us, this time of year recalls our childhood. That’s certainly the case for Elizabeth Bewick, in her poem “Oranges at Christmas Time” which we heard earlier. She draws her memories together in the poem’s conclusion:
Oranges at Christmas time, memory
sharp as their flavour, sweet as the
indulgences of childhood and the lasting
power of love.
I for one received a satsuma in every Christmas stocking in my childhood: even now that flavour takes me back.
There are other Christmas cultures and customs of course, about which people feel deeply nostalgic. Today, 13 December, is St Lucy’s Day. Happy St Lucy’s Day – Sankta Lucia – to all are celebrating, especially people from Sweden and other Nordic countries. St Lucy was a Christian martyr who died in the opening years of the fourth century in Syracuse, Sicily. It is said that she brought food and help to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs during the Diocletian Persecution, wearing a candlelit wreath on her head to light her way and leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible.
In Nordic lands, girls wear candles in headdresses on this day, signifying light during the darkest time of the year.
Where’s all this going? Has the current Chaplain simply entered his anecdotage? Have I become a living edition of the annual Kate Kennedy publication College Echoes? Not quite – or at least, not yet. For the odd thing is, nostalgia is built into the Bible’s infancy narratives of Jesus, the original Christmas story. As you can see, this sermon has for its title a module and exam on this subject in the University, AN2023 Nostalgia in the Ancient Near East c. 4 BCE … which I’ve invented for the occasion. Why c. 4 BCE? Because Jesus was probably born around 4 BC – before Christ. A slight historical mix-up in later dating. Anyway, such a module could be developed in our Schools of Classics or Divinity.
Take the reading from Zephaniah, one of the Old Testament prophecies hoping for a Messiah, often read in Advent. This hope harks back to another time:
At that time I will bring you home…
I [will] restore your fortunes.
This future hope is for a return to what was good before, a golden age of prosperity and peace.
Moreover the Gospel narratives around the birth of Jesus are suffused with the past and the longing to recapture it.
Why, for example, was Jesus born in Bethlehem? Because Joseph was descended from King David who lived some 1000 years before. And it was hoped that the Messiah would be a king like him, charismatic and successful.
Why did the angel and the heavenly host choose shepherds to encounter the new-born child? Because David was the shepherd-king, and as we know from the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is our shepherd, and because the Hebrew prophets longed for another good shepherd to guide and protect the flock – their people. This is a longing to go back.
And then why a child, why the angel, the promise and the hope in an infant? Because this is how God had helped in the past, by sending a child who would grow in wisdom and stature to lead their people into the fulfilment of promise, and peace. Think of Moses in his basket on the Nile. Or Hannah’s son Samuel, whom she devoted to God’s service. Or John the Baptist, a much-longed for child for Elizabeth who leapt in her womb when the pregnant Mary visited. Children had brought God’s hope afresh in the past.
And then there are the Magi, those much-travelled scholars of constellations. Surely these foreigners don’t hark back to older hopes. Well, they too are seeking for the Messiah. And they fulfil ancient expectations that the kings of the nations would offer worship – homage – to Israel’s ruler: Isaiah 60:
Nations shall come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
To recap: this service is nostalgic, as is any alumni gathering. Christmas is also a time of nostalgia. Even the very biblical narratives look back to long-gone heroes, longing for a return of former glory, a restoration of fortune, a new ruler cast in the cloth of the old. Is that all that’s going on in the birth of Jesus? And isn’t nostalgia somewhat dangerous? Isn’t there a temptation in elevating the past to ignore significant changes since then? What room is there in nostalgia for increased representation of women, opportunity for people of different ethnic backgrounds, or the freedom to be the people we discover ourselves to be? How can a nostalgia-based faith address the issues of our contemporary lives, our present world?
This, as you may recall from lectures, is when the lecturer pauses and says: I am now coming to the heart of my argument.
Could I suggest that the birth of Jesus, though framed in powerful expressions of memory, offers something absolutely contemporary. The gift of God in this child isn’t a re-tread, it’s a new creation.
This is the point indeed of our final reading tonight, the prologue to John’s Gospel. John chapter 1 begins by quoting the very first book of the Bible Genesis chapter 1: In the beginning… You may remember walking under their Latin translation to enter St Mary’s Quad – In principio… John goes on to explore God, the word and light. All beautiful, but possibly in the tradition of Jewish wisdom literature. But then the astounding, extraordinary, tradition-exploding verse: The word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.
Suddenly nostalgia looks rather dusty and unimaginative, so last year. By contrast, the Gospel is continuously new. This child is not another hero with feet of clay, a leader who will ultimately disappoint. This is God himself, come to share his beloved creation from the inside out. And so the shepherds glorified and praised God. The Magi were overwhelmed with joy. And Mary treasured and pondered these things. Life was utterly changed – memory could not contain it. Truly, and it is now the right time for the cliché you may have been anticipating all evening, nostalgia is not what it used to be.
What of today?
I don’t think I really need to say it’s been quite some year. It’s tempting of course to stay in 4 BCE in the Ancient Near East rather than 2023 in Israel, Gaza and Palestine, or in the entrenched interests resisting change at Cop 28. But of course we can’t live in the past, and we must face today’s problems – personal, societal, political and environmental. The word became flesh, and if that means anything, it means that we believe in life before death as well as beyond it. And so we are called to witness to the light in this creation of fragile flesh, perhaps with a courage in our day as Sankta Lucia showed in hers.
In a moment we will sing the carol It came upon the midnight clear. It may be nostalgic for you – it certainly is for my wife and me, as it was sung at our wedding. It was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears in 1849, the news of the war between the United States and Mexico fresh in his mind. In some ways it harks back, nostalgic for the song of the angels, referring to an Age of Gold. Yet it can also be an inspiration to our lives now, to make the ancient promise fresh and true, realised in our life and time:
when peace shall over all the earth
its ancient splendours fling,
and all the world give back the song
which now the angels sing.
An alumni carol service: memory and anticipation; echoes and prospects; word become flesh. I wish you a merry Christmas recalling the best of years gone by, and a happy New Year drawing on the best of times to come.
END