Veiled in Flesh?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Image credit: Gage Skidmore

There are some great lines in Christmas carols. My favourite is in ‘Joy to the World’, where we’re told that Jesus ‘came to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found’. That’s a great, one-line summary of why Jesus came into the world. It would be hard to find anyone who would disagree with the statement that the world is not as it should be. Why is that the case? Some would say lack of education. Others would say inequality. Still others would say religion. The Bible’s explanation is that this world has been under a curse ever since humanity’s rejection of God back in the Garden of Eden. It was the effects of that curse that Jesus came to reverse.

Other carols are more problematic, however. ‘Silent night’? – no, it definitely wasn’t! ‘No crying he makes’? – real babies cry. ‘We three kings?’ – they weren’t kings and we're’ not told how many there were. ‘Mary, did you know’? Yes, yes she did. And as for the little drummer boy…

Another problematic line is from a carol originally entitled ‘Hark how all the Welkin rings’. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s now known to us as ‘Hark! The Herald Angels sing’. The line in question reads: ‘Veiled in Flesh, the Godhead see’. It’s saying that in Jesus, we see God, albeit veiled. Surely it should be the opposite, however: Jesus was not God veiled – but God revealed.

He is, as the Bible says elsewhere, ‘the image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15). John’s gospel begins by telling us that while ‘No one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known’. Jesus’ own testimony is that he is the Revealer of the Father: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9).

As someone has put it: ‘The Godhead was not veiled in flesh. The Godhead was revealed in flesh. God makes himself known, not hidden, in flesh’

Why does any of this matter? Because if Jesus is the revealer of God, then if we want to know what the invisible God is like, we need to look at Jesus.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a major figure in the New Atheism movement, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. The latter once described her as the ‘the most important public intellectual probably ever to come out of Africa’. Last month, she announced her conversion to Christianity. Brought up as a Muslim, she became a prominent critic of Islam, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage and female genital mutilation. In a recent interview, she said ‘the god I grew up with was a horror show’. Her therapist once asked her what she thought that God should be like if he existed; the answer she came up with was Jesus Christ. Ali says that she once hated God – but the ‘god’ she hated was not like Jesus. Similarly, many people today reject a ‘God’ who is nothing like Jesus. If Jesus is the one who reveals God however, he must be our starting point in coming to see what God is like.

Author and Seminary President Michael Reeves used to have an almost physical reaction to the word ‘God’. It was not a word that brought him any ‘comfort and joy’ (to quote another carol). He describes an experience surely not unique to him: 

‘I found myself interested in heaven, interested in salvation, even interested in Jesus, but not attracted to God. I longed to escape hell and go to heaven, but God’s presence was not the inducement. Quite the opposite: I would have been far more comfortable with a Godless paradise’.

So what changed? Through reading some of the great writers of church history, Reeves came to realise that ‘there is no God in heaven who is unlike Jesus’. The great truth of the incarnation is not God veiled in human flesh – but God revealed in human flesh.

And what sort of God does Jesus reveal? A good of perfect compassion, perfect tenderness, perfect justice, perfect love. A God who we were created to be like – but are very unlike.

Jesus’ coming into the world is significant because of how the story would end: with his death on the cross. Far from being a tragic accident, his death was the very reason he came – so that the sin that separates us from God could be dealt with. Truly that is ‘glad tidings of great joy!’

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 21 December 2023

Another take on the same theme, but aimed at a different audience, appeared on Gentle Reformation earlier this week.

The Real Advent

Have you got an advent calendar yet? Growing up, I remember having one where you just opened a little door every day and that was it – no chocolate behind it or anything! Never mind some of the fancier ones available today, with various wines and spirits inside. The most expensive one I’ve seen is a £570 Dior one you can get from Harrods.

Some would say that the true meaning of advent – counting down to the birth of Jesus – has been forgotten. You might be surprised however to learn that the true meaning of advent was lost long ago – when it was first associated with Christmas!

A few years ago, Mark Forsyth, a Sunday Times bestselling author, wrote a great little book called ‘A Christmas Cornucopia’. If you’re into myth-busting, it’s a great read. You’re probably already familiar with some of it. For example, the Bible doesn’t tell us when Jesus was born, but we do know that it definitely couldn’t have been the 25th of December, because if it had been, the shepherds wouldn’t have had their sheep outside.

And did you know that the twelve days of Christmas song is actually a recipe for a Christmas dinner? One of the long-running traditions of Christmas is to eat different types of birds. Today, we tend to eat turkeys. 150 years ago it was geese. And actually, if you go back and look at the words, you’ll see it’s a list of twelve different birds, listed in descending order of size. The smaller birds would have been stuffed inside bigger ones; even the five gold rings were most likely ring-necked pheasants.

The song ‘Jingle Bells’ was originally written about the American holiday of Thanksgiving.

One thing Forsyth keeps coming back to is that there are two fairly common beliefs about the origins of Christmas. One is that it was invented by pagans, and then taken over by Christianity – the other is that it was invented by the Victorians. Charles Dickens, according to a recent film, is ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. Forsyth concludes that Christmas is neither pagan nor Victorian. However lot of the things we associate with Christmas today did only start in Victorian times – such as Christmas carols, which were originally pub songs, that were Christianised. But basically, what we tend to think of as Christmas is just a hodge-podge of different traditions that have come together over time.

One of the traditions he puts under the microscope is Advent. ‘Almost everybody knows that Advent is about the coming of Christmas – and almost everybody is wrong’. Why? Well as he goes on to say, the word advent certainly means coming. But originally it wasn’t talking about the first coming of Jesus, it was talking about his second coming. Not the time when he came as a baby, but the time when he will come again as judge. In fact, the traditional readings in churches for Advent Sunday are all about Judgement Day, with the stars falling from the sky, and so on.

As Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, put it in the mid-300s: ‘We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the first’. He goes on to spell out the contrast: ‘In his former advent, he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; in his second he covers himself with light as with a garment’. In his first coming he endured the cross, despising shame, in his second he comes attended by a host of angels, receiving glory’. 

And that, according to the Bible, is why Jesus’ birth matters. Because he’s coming back.

I think that at this time of year, we get a sense that we haven’t been living the way we should have been for the previous eleven months. We recognise that we’ve probably been a bit self-centred. And so we try to redeem ourselves with acts of kindness. With giving to charity. In short, with the sort of things that we should be doing all year round.

But that’s the opposite of why the Bible says Jesus came. It says that he came to redeem us, because we couldn’t redeem ourselves. He came, not primarily to be a good example, but to live and die in the place of his people. The manger was part of the journey to the cross.

His first advent was to achieve and offer salvation. And only by receiving that gift can we be ready for the real Advent.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 30th November 2023

Airdrie Psalm Singing Saturday

The Airdrie congregation recently hosted an afternoon precentor’s worksop, followed by an evening psalm-singing event entitled ‘Songs of Adversity’. A number of people from Stranraer were able to attend, and short reports from each event are included below.

Precenting Workshop report by Ian Murphy

A precenting workshop was held at Airdrie RP Church on Saturday November 4. During the two hours we were taught many techniques and tips by workshop leader, Tim Duguid.  This included breathing technique, pitching tunes, and reading music in the staff and sol-fa.  Alsow, we each had an opportunity to sing a psalm of our choice and receive 1 to 1 tuition, advice and feedback.  

This was followed by an evening meal and psalm singing.  

Further workshops are planned, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in precenting or singing.

Songs of Adversity report by Trinity McConnell

On Saturday evening the 4th November, Airdrie RPC hosted an event organised by Tim Duguid, a member of the congregation as well as lecturer at the University of Glasgow. The event, subtitled ‘Scottish Stories in Uncertain Times.’ was a night to focus on some of the men and woman of Scotland's past and it was great to hear some insight into a few of the Covenanters stories. The psalms were introduced by Jimmy Fisher, a deacon in the congregation. There was also plenty of psalm singing and it was so encouraging to be able to join together with others to praise God.

The evening was well attended and there was a lovely time of fellowship afterwards. It was my first time attending the Airdrie congregation and I was made to feel very welcome. There were people in attendance from all five Scottish congregations and I enjoyed getting to meet some of them.

Overall I think it was an informative and encouraging evening for all who attended and I would love to see more events like this in future.

Messiah the Prince - now in Portuguese

Perhaps the most famous book ever written in Stranraer is Messiah the Prince, by William Symgington (minister here from 1819-39). First published in 1839, it has been republished numerous times since. It has now been translated into Portuguese and is available to buy in Brazil from Publicações O Pacto.

Stephen contributed the following endorsement:

“It was said many centuries ago that while ‘other churches have asserted and contended for Christ’s priestly and prophetical offices, the lot seemeth to have fallen upon Scotland to assert and wrestle more eminently than many others for the crown and kingdom of Jesus Christ’. The reference was to the struggle of the seventeenth century Covenanters, and there is no greater summary of their principles than this work by William Symington. Written in the South West corner of Scotland, this book was timely in its day, being published four years before the ‘Disruption’ of the Church of Scotland. I pray that its republication will be similarly timely for Portuguese-speaking churches in our own day as they seek to proclaim the kingship of Jesus Christ over their own nations.”