apocalypse comprehended

I had hidden from others how hard I struggled for faith in those first days. What kept me going, what empowered me, was the candle flame of life that licked and flickered in my belly. The son I carried, so tiny, made me courageous for his sake, for he had nobody on earth to defend his honour or to protect him – only me.

So I struggled, all brave face and hidden terror.

Then came the extraordinary one moment. I stood there, and I was supported by the sudden unexpected grace of my old cousin, and in that one moment total certainty filled me.

All generations would envy me, and with me, those like me. The reviled. The weak. The barely-hopeful. They would learn where God’s favour lay. Right was prevailing. The strong, the rich, the self satisfied, they were doomed. God’s strength was not hidden any longer, it was made plain in my life, in the lives of those like me. It was we who were filled with faith, and the longing for justice, and we were satisfied with mercy, filling our mouths and hearts until there was no room for more, until the grace of God ran down our faces like the juices of an overfull mouth of grapes.

I stood there exultant, and the glory of the moment lit dark moments of terror whenever they threatened to engulf me for years to come. Always I would remember when the flame of the small life shone from within me as the brightest thing in the world.

apocalypse always

Papyrus is expensive. I smooth my hand over it. Greek, too, in its own way is expensive. A language which takes my mind in difficult directions, where I need to concentrate to get the full natural value from the words. Though these days I dream in Greek.

I take up the pen, dip it in the ink. I sigh. It is so clear in my mind. I see circle after circle, each holier, more perfect than the next. Daily life, the Temple, the Holy Place, the Holy of Holies. Then, far and far beyond them, Jesus himself. I see him offer himself. How magnificent is it to do that? To take your very life, for that is what blood is, and to pour it away for others. To do it once, and to do it always. Nothing is holy beside that.

And all I have to offer to get the enormity of this across to people is papyrus and ink. I am translating. Hebrew into Greek. One culture to others. I am trying to draw people up, on. I see them stop, willing to be children in faith, never growing, never learning. They fail to see the enormity of what is done for them. They fail to see the life, the very life dashed out willingly, openly, once and always.

Really I do not know if I can ever get that across to them. And all I have is pen and paper. I sigh again. The ink on the pen is dry. I dip it again. I write: ‘When Christ came into the world…’

wrong apocalypse

Heat burned. The sun baked, destroyed. The water was all the more delightful in contrast. Fasting until hunger died, water never failed to give joy. I dunked them all. I took all who came, and turned them round, washed off the past, set them on track to become true children of the father-of-us-all Abraham. I was so wide, so radical in my acceptance. Nobody fell outside the scope of my message. Collaborators, extortioners – I told them all they could live a life as acceptable to God as the next man.

But it was a balanced message. I did full justice to the demands of Heaven for radical purity. I told them all to repent. I spoke of the one who would come. I spoke of the joy of his gathering in those who I was winnowing clean, but I also spoke of the terror of fire. I spoke of the destruction of evil.
Now I turn to and fro, to and fro, pacing this small cell. For I thought I knew the one who was coming after and he has let me down. Where is the radical purity? Where is the constant demand for repentance, the new life? Fire? Fire?

He forgives, not the Heavenly One, him – alright, I offered a new start, but in return for repentance. He just – he just offers it. He gives it away free. He cheapens it. He cheapens the Lord.
I offered them cool out of the fire, I gave them water and cleansing, and I gave to all who were sorry. I hear tonight he went to the house of a self righteous Pharisee, who would never recognise how his own wealth was an affront, and he had a common tart draped over his feet, and he just sat there, stuffing his face and talking about how they were all forgiven. And not one word of judgement, not one. This one offers no fire of any kind, nothing to burn up, transform, consume.

And yet, and yet. Some things that he says chime true as a bell. Some things that he does. So I pace here, waiting, waiting for my disciples to report back. My heart sinks. I had thought I would not die before I saw the One Who Is To Come.

Is this self-indulgent one with his easy words, that One? Would it be better or worse if he was?

personal apocalypse

He bounced up and down the room. The cell, actually. We’d both been in worse places, but not many. He’d had another of his attacks the day before, something he now just seemed to accept. That he could not be healed had perhaps been a worse difficulty and sorrow than any of the beatings, or the imprisonings, or the delay in the Lord’s coming. He had gone over and over that one, spinning out words, understandings, theories. I did not know how satisfied he was with his current understanding.

He was now on a straight path to death. I think he knew that. Of course, Roman policy was not as fixed at that time as it is now but, well, he was no fool.

And he bounced up that cell – his arms outstretched, crying out ‘Rejoice, again I say, Rejoice!’ My stylus dug into the wax, and eventually he paused for me to catch up. He perched on the bed end, beaming. His mind was already in another loop.

‘They are wonderful people – those two women, especially,’ another beam, ‘though the men will keep trying to undermine them,’ deep frown, ‘and that is something to watch,’ deep sigh, ‘I do have to keep on prodding and pushing so.’ He fell silent. ‘I don’t seem fully able to get my joy across.’
I waited, sucking the flat end of the stylus.

‘Why is that?’ he pondered, ‘Why don’t they yearn to give, to serve, why do they still worry? I worry over them, of course, but nothing else.’ I knew his thoughts had again turned to the Lord Christ because his plain sweaty face under the domed bald head was suddenly illuminated by joy and safety. Safety like – the child who being afraid, runs to her mother and then peeps out from the sheltering skirts, safety breeding mischief. Like the lights set at a harbour entrance, flickering yet constant. Like a lamp set in a small dark window opening to welcome home the wandering beloved.

‘They are getting better’ a little forced, I thought, ‘One day the world will say “How the Christians love one another” – if only they give up arguing so.’  Easier for us all if they give up arguing with you, I thought.

Then suddenly another indrawn breath. I was startled. I caught his eye, saw laughter growing.
‘And the end of your stylus. I worry over that. One more tooth mark and it will never smooth out the wax properly.’

the voice in the wilderness

Have you woken in the night, again and again, looking for the dawn? The dawn of a day you dread, but need? That is how it was. Judah stirred in her sleep. She opened her eyes, and looked towards the door, the door into freedom. She was searching for the light of dawn, for a day she wanted, and she dreaded.

Judah is us. It was I and my friends who peered into the darkness for a light. The coldness of the faith of those round us. The tepid following of the law. We looked at those sleeping round us, and we longed for a true dawn. And then there came a voice, like the voice of a herald.

In the desert, in the old heartland of our Lord. In the wilderness, from which our people came. A man who seemed to be everything we longed for. He was sure, certain. He was ascetic, dressed in strange ways, marked out as one who was wholly dedicated and set apart. What he preached was just what we expected. The old call back to purity of life. The themes we ached to hear. And mixed with the themes we expected was just enough of the new. He took the practise of ritual washing-clean which we had seen so often, and he elevated it. He offered purity through forgiveness, washing, amendment of life. It was a great mix. It was the prefect combination.

Why did it leave us dissatisfied, in some corner of ourselves?

Apocalypse sometime

Timothy sucked the stylus. ‘So, when do you think it will come, this Day of Jesus Christ?’
I sighed. ‘I used to think – before I was arrested, before I got shipped to Rome. Now? Seriously? I have no idea.

Nor have I any idea how we all got it so wrong.’

I had tried to find out from those who actually heard Jesus just what he had said. The trouble was all I was getting back was a sense of urgency and a great deal of contradictory sayings. It was so real to them all, this Day of the Christ. Well, it was so real to all of us, who had been expecting it years before we ever heard of Jesus. And he had been the Christ. No doubts. So he had to have his day, of which he spoke with such urgency. And we had not yet had it. As far as I could make out, that was all we could really say.

But it would come, it would come. And somehow we had to keep up the urgency. We had to live, really live, in these inbetween times. I had to live this imprisonment. They had to live live too. I sighed again. I had lost the thread. I dragged my thoughts back into Greek, and set off into another sentence.

apocalypse now

Those last days are like a dream now.  Full of inconsequential details, and of sudden changes, and of foreboding.

Jesus talked, talked, talked.  He burned, alive, alert, in constant motion as his hands blurred through the air.  He would stop only to gulp down water.  The water was a constant source of anxiety, for we had to buy it at extortionate rates, and none of the water vendors ever seemed to be there when we really needed one.  We could not get him to eat.  Every day he was thinner, and he could ill afford to be thinner.  All he would do by night was pray.  All he would do by day was talk.

Every one of us got more and more exhausted.  Listening got harder and harder.  He had always taught intensely, now it was so fast we could not keep up.  We spun between contradictions, misconceptions.  We were always tired, always thirsty, always hungry and always tied to the need to keep him going.

Buried in the incomprehensible words there were jewels.  One time he looked straight at me, deep, deep into my eyes.  ‘The Kingdom is the only thing which truly matters.  Stop carrying all those burdens which keep you from it.  Give up all addictions.  Give up addiction to drink, food, and to worry.  That is a very burdensome addiction, worry.’

I had no idea how anybody could stop worrying.  I needed to worry, and had so much to worry over, that I could not see how worry could be an addiction.  For a moment I thought perhaps he had no need to worry.  That he could perhaps smooth out life for himself and for us too.  Then I saw a pair of two-a-penny-sparrows go off for sacrifice.  So, worry was a temptation he resisted to bend all his strength on bringing in the Kingdom.  I wondered what if anything had the power to send him pleading for escape, and what he would do if it did.  Then he stretched out his cup for more water, and I heaved myself up to find a vendor.

Elizabeth’s Story

All the long years of pitying glances rolled away in the glory of this conception. There was an absolute rightness in it. The angel appearing in the holy Temple, in the right place, and at the sacred time. The promise of the holiness of the child.

God had indeed remembered his promises, his old ways of working. I dreamed of a future for this child. He would restore the ancient purity of ways, the law strictly observed, and Israel called back to the true pure path. The comparison which I could not help making was between my husband and myself and the greatest of all our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. We had always tried so hard to live holy lives, Zechariah and I – and now we were to be rewarded. And yes, Zechariah had, to some degree made a bit of a mess of it, but he had surely be forgiven, or my belly would not have been swelling with a baby.

Conceived like this, my child would surely be – well, he HAD to be the long awaited Messiah, didn’t he? As great and greater than Elijah, Moses, Isaac, Israel himself.

So great was my joy that I was generous when word reached me that my young cousin Mary was – well, that she had- well, Mary came to stay for a little.

She stood in the doorway. My heart seemed to stop still. My baby leapt in me like a fish breaking water. Every certainty stood on its head. Purity was swallowed in love. Repentance was engulfed by forgiveness. The reward of virtue went down before the glory of self offering. What I was, what my child was, that too went down. Now, what had been first would be last. And she, who by rights would have been last, she was the first. Impurity had become healing, rebirth.

My child? What could I and he do but spread ourselves out in the service of she and hers.

‘Who am I to see the mother of my Master?’ I cried. Every certainty was lost in a huge hope.

Gabriel’s story

The two great spheres of time and eternity touched and I leapt across. I had made myself as small as I could, fitting myself into a shape as unalarming as I could manage, until the whole of my spirit cried out in pain at its restriction.
Standing before her, I spoke at once, saying: ‘I am honoured, God-chosen.’ and I saw the fear in her eyes. I saw ahead through her sphere, and I knew the terrible path she was agreeing to. I saw through eternity. The slight, indomitable figure, the childish confidence of faith, and the parched  agonized end and beyond. The choice made with a whole heart, and the choice made again and again as the cost and the pain mounted.
She made to reverence the glory of my reduced frame.  I knelt before her.

Nativity

Today we had our yearly Nativity play by the younger members of our congregation aided by a few of the more elderly.

This year however it wasn’t so historically accurate. We had two female magi and no shepherds (partly due to the fact she forgot her lines but I believe it was because she felt it was too cold for her sheep to travel to the nave alter, I mean manger).

It was acted out this year through mime and rhyme, Joseph had a few cups of tea and we had the  Arch angel Gabriel and the star doing a mini version of “Heads, Shoulders, Knee and Toes”.

Yet ever year I think of what it would have been like that cold evening for the expectant parents: tired, weary, fearful yet I believe, ready. Bless Mary, the young girl, and from all accounts we’ve come to realise she may have been as young as 14, who accepted the role as Mother to the Saviour of the world.

Think about the same situation into our society today, let me break it down this way: a young mother unexpectedly pregnant, a young man thrust into fatherhood before he was thinking about it. We see it all the time, young parents, but we walk past them and, I think unintentionally sometimes, sneer or look down at them, without knowing their story, how can we do this to them and yet praise our Lord and light an Advent candle today for His mother Mary, who on the face of it, were in a very similar situation.