[a bit of a rough and ready draft, with deep gratitude to Julian Dobson, whose brilliant blogpost ‘A truce and a common: a Christmas story’ (http://livingwithrats.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/a-truce-and-common-christmas-story.html) helped both shape and 'earth' my more disparate thoughts]
The rabbi asked his students: “How can we determine the hour
of the dawn, when the night ends and the day begins?” One of the students
suggested: “When from a distance you can see the difference between a dog and a
sheep?” “No,” answered the rabbi. “Is it when you can tell the difference
between a fig tree and a grapevine?” asked a second student. “No,” the rabbi
said. “Please tell us the answer then,” said the students. “It is dawn,” said
the wise teacher, “when you look into the face of another human being and you
have enough light in you to recognize your brother or sister. Until then it is
night, and darkness is still with us.”
Two years ago, in the middle of this church, a tent appeared, just before Advent, with a sign over its opening, ‘Welcome to the Kingdom of God’. It was a sign of revolutionary hope, at a time when tents were
springing up all over the place, from Egypt’s Tahrir Square, to Wall Street and
the City of London – canvas occupations of places the powerful thought they had
under control; places where, all of a sudden, the hungry were being fed, all who were
sick were being treated, the voiceless were being heard, impossible dreams were being dreamed.
But then, what? What has changed? A question echoing down
the years not just from 2011, but from two millennia before. “Beneath the angel
strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong.” What has changed?
In the House of Commons last week, government ministers and
their colleagues laughed and jeered, or just didn’t bother turning up, for a
debate on the causes of the spiralling increase in foodbank use, and then
within days launched vicious attacks on the Trussell Trust, Church Action on Poverty, and others for daring to ask why people are going hungry in one of the
richest nations in the world.
Less reported, for the first time this Christmas, people in prison have been banned from receiving parcels from their loved ones, including
stationery, books, and clothes – under new rules introduced by the Justice
Secretary, Chris Grayling.
And then are stories which won’t reach the newspapers at
all, of men and women, young and old, stripped of even their pittance of
jobseeker’s allowance over Christmas, for reasons as arbitrary and as unjust as
not being able to attend the JobCentre because of a hospitalising illness.[i]
It is still night, and darkness is still with us. There is
not enough light, it seems, to look into the faces of our fellow human beings
and recognise them as our sisters and brothers. We are still too immersed in
our own ideologies, our own self-interests, our own agendas, to hear the
love-song the angels bring.
And yet...
In a Mexican slum there is a destitute old woman who each
year puts up an extensive nativity set. The Christ Child is in the centre, of
course, and around him she places dozens and dozens of figures of people and
animals. This is no matched set! None of the figurines match; and they are not
in scale with each other, some only an inch high, some several feet tall. She
just clutters the set with whatever figurines she can find. But there is a
great truth hidden in this mish-mash of nativity characters. Although the
senora cannot read or write, she has seen something that is all too easily
missed. In the Bethlehem stable, there is room for all. From the highest to the
lowest, from king to shepherd, from old woman to new born baby.
On one level, it is merely a chaotic, mismatching nativity
set. An eccentric tradition. A futile gesture. But on another level, it
‘prefigures’ a different world, a place where ‘what-is-not-yet’ breaks in to
‘what-is’. Just like the alternative spaces that Occupy Wall
Street, Occupy London Stock Exchange, and many more, created. However fragile,
however temporary, however imperfect. Places in which to practice living
differently. Places where we can learn to recognise each other as sisters and
brothers.[ii]
The pictures of Rembrandt are striking in many ways, but
perhaps most so for the way he uses light and shade. Have a look at his picture
of the Nativity. There is a man with a lamp, but the stable is not lit by the
lamp. The light comes from the manger, the light from the newborn Jesus lights
up the faces of those around him, enabling us to see them, and enabling them to
see each other.[iii]
This is where night ends, and dawn begins. In the stable. In the manger.
On the day of Nelson Mandela’s funeral, I led a small, quiet
Requiem Mass in this church. I was accompanied by five men, as they remembered
the uncle of one of them, who had recently died. They came from five different
African countries, countries which have, at times, been at war with each other.
Congo, Burundi, South Sudan, and others. And as we remembered those who had
died, and shared bread and wine together, we recalled the words Archbishop
Rowan Williams had used recently to describe Nelson Mandela:
“Most politicians,” he said, “represent
an interest group, a community of people who vote for them and whose interests
they serve. Nelson Mandela was different; he represented a community that did
not yet exist, a community he hoped would come into being.”
‘Prefiguring’ a different world, a place where
‘what-is-not-yet’ breaks in to ‘what-is’. A place not fully a reality in
today’s South Africa, by any means. But a place glimpsed, touched, tasted.
And I was reminded too of the words of another Archbishop,
Christoph Munizihirwa, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bukavu, Zaire, who was
killed by Rwandan soldiers in the process of surrendering himself, in the hope
that two companions might be able to escape in his car:
“One cannot wait for conditions to be easy in order to act,”
said Archbishop Munzihirwa, not long before his death. “People of good will
must never be disheartened... There are things that can be seen only with eyes
that have cried... In the midst of it all, the seed sown in the soil of
our heart slowly germinates. God knows that there is no better way for him to
express himself than through the weakness of a child. This is love telling us
that it comes unarmed.”
The seed in the soil. The light in the stable. The tent in
the city square. The nativity scene in the slum. The prisoner who forgives his
enemies. The martyred Archbishop. The child in the manger. These are the small,
fragile beginnings of revolution. And those in power do not like them one bit.
And so they send armed police in to clear the tents. They attack churches and
faith organisations for ‘scaremongering’, and, bizarrely, for creating the
demand for food banks in the first place. And a threatened king in Jerusalem
orders the massacre of all Bethlehem’s babies.
And what do we do? We keep on beginning the revolution.
Returning to the stable. Planting new seeds. Putting up new tents. Forgiving
new enemies. Hearing to speech as-yet-unheard voices.
There is a place not far from Reading in Berkshire called
‘Christmas Common’. It is the site, according to the history books, of a
Christmas truce in 1643 during the English Civil War. A dangerous, if fleeting,
moment of daring to recognise enemies as brothers or sisters, even in the
darkness of the battlefield. But Commons like Christmas Common – and perhaps
even a Common much closer to home – are also enduring places of shared
resource, open to and cared for a whole community, places where ‘commoners’ of
all backgrounds and circumstances can meet each other as equals, as neighbours,
as sisters and brothers, and work, and play, and eat, and celebrate together.[iv]
We have a dream for just such a common in the wasteland we’ve renamed ‘Bromford
Meadow’. A seed sown in the soil, slowly germinating.
Our twice-weekly 'Open Door' is another such space where 'what-is-not-yet' breaks in to 'what-is'. It is what it says: an open door. And a warm welcome, a hot cup of tea, some friendly faces, and listening ears. A place where people might come in with 'I need', but discover among friends an 'I can', perhaps for the first time.
Our twice-weekly 'Open Door' is another such space where 'what-is-not-yet' breaks in to 'what-is'. It is what it says: an open door. And a warm welcome, a hot cup of tea, some friendly faces, and listening ears. A place where people might come in with 'I need', but discover among friends an 'I can', perhaps for the first time.
We get a taste of ‘what-is-not-yet’, too, every time we share
communion together, whether it’s shared in a circle, where we can see the faces
of our sisters and brothers; or shared in a moment together, each waiting to eat
until all present have food in their hands – our own small ‘prefiguring’ of the
time when no one goes hungry.
In 1990, the year that Nelson Mandela made his ‘long walk to
freedom’, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (who also died this year) was translating
a Greek epic telling the story of the Trojan War. It gave him some of his most well-quoted
words. They are words for a night like this, as we celebrate once again the Word-made-flesh,
and as we wait for dawn to break:
“History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme”
[i] I’m deeply grateful to Julian Dobson for highlighting these
3 examples in his brilliant blog post, ‘A truce and a common: a Christmas story’
(http://livingwithrats.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/a-truce-and-common-christmas-story.html)
[ii] See e.g. reflections on Occupy’s politics of ‘mutual recognition’
http://www.opendemocracy.net/participation-now/rc-smith-richard-gunn-adrian-wilding/alternative-horizons-understanding-occupys-po
[iv] Julian Dobson, ‘A truce and a common:
a Christmas story’
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