A Lover and a Fighter (a Christmas postscript)

The following is from pages 124-125 & 130 of C.S. Lewis' book Reflections on the Psalms:

[The Psalms' focus on the Messiah as a conquering hero] emphasizes an aspect of the Nativity to which our later sentiment about Christmas (excellent in itself) does less than justice. For those who first read these [messianic] Psalms as poems about the birth of Christ, that birth meant something very militant: the hero, the "judge" or champion or giant-killer, who was to fight and beat death, hell and the devils, had at last arrived, and the evidence suggests that Our Lord also thought of Himself in those terms.

[...]

The hero has come.

Read in this sense, the [messianic] Psalm restores Christmas to its proper complexity. The birth of Christ is the arrival of the great warrior and the great king. Also of the Lover, the Bridegroom, whose beauty surpasses that of man. But not only the Bridegroom as the lover, the desired; the Bridegroom also as he who makes fruitful, the father of children still to be begotten and born. Certainly the image of a Child in a manger by no means suggests to us a king, giant-killer, bridegroom, and father. But it would not suggest the eternal Word either---if we didn't know. All alike are aspects of the same central paradox.

"...the blue sapphire of the year..." (by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care

For times and seasons---but this one glad day

Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights

That flash in the girdle of the year so fair---

When thou wast born a man, because alway

Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights

Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.

(George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul)

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

Christmas music from Fernando Ortega (with apologies for a few cheesy images):

In Our Midst (Christmas Homily)

"...eyes to see..."

"O taste and see that the Lord is good." Ps. 34:8

The goodness of God is not an abstraction, not a mere dog- matic assertion requiring no more than intellectual assent. Rather, the goodness of God is to be a sensory experience (and not the only one). It is meant to be tactile and fragrant, audible and visible and flavorful. This does not mean that you will suddenly receive complete comprehension of the incom- prehensible God. What it does mean is that His goodness is meant to be experienced in the actual moments of your life. It is to be a point of contact between you and the Divine, a moment of Incarnation, a moment where God leaves the ivory tower of your mind and becomes real in the midst of your experience.

As close as the house you're standing in.

If our God is hidden, it is because He is too immense and not because He is too obscure, like the house you're living in, which is the only one you don't see when you look out your window. It is too close for perception, and so is God. The incomprehensibly im- mense God is in your midst always, and though the limits of our mind cannot grasp Him fully, He is meant to be experienced. He is meant to be met in the moment. In ancient days, though veils and walls kept Him separate from His people, He still had a place amongst them, an actual dwelling in the Holiest of Holies. Today, though time and space and perception seem to separate us, He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:26-28). Furthermore, He has made His people His dwelling place (John 14:23; II Cor. 6:16), a body fitly joined together (Eph. 4:15-16), so that He may be experienced by us as well as through us to the world (Matt. 5:14-16).

Our God believes in making Himself known, believes in revelation and incarnation, believes in proving Himself to be real. If he had not spoken through His word, if He had not come in the likeness of men, then we would have cause to call Him an obscurantist. But He did, so we do not. He has proven His presence (Is. 45:18-19; Heb. 1:1-2), he has proven His love (Rom. 5:8; I John 4:9-10), and He continually proves His goodness. Therefore, ask for eyes to see Him, to see His goodness, and to let that goodness build a monument to His presence in your life.

"I have not spoken in secret...."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Christmas Trees (and the beauty of God)

We shall behold Him....

"Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." Ps. 29:2b

A standard Hebrew word for "beauty" is "noam," which means "pleasing or delightful to the senses." It is the word David uses in Psalm 27:4 when he said that part of his great desire was to "behold the beauty of the Lord." It is a bold statement, not just in what it's asking but also in what it's implying, i.e., God's beauty is a sensory experience (and not just a mental abstraction). However, David did not use "noam" here in Psalm 29:2. He uses "hadarah" instead, which includes the idea of "noam" but carries it further. "Hadarah" means "ornamentation" or "decoration," and could be associated with one's apparel ("adornment"). It is similar to the Greek word "κοσμος" in that they both mean "order," a specific kind of order: an arranging or arrangement of beauties ("noam") that accentuates and maximizes their overall beauty.

The beauty of holiness.

Think of it like a Christmas tree, which we decorate ("hadarah") with beautiful things ("noam") in order to make an even more beautiful thing, a summation of beautiful parts. I can think of other examples, like jewelry, which is the taking of separate, individual jewels ("noam") and arranging them in a particular sequence ("hadarah") to create an even greater beauty. Another good example, as I mentioned earlier, would be clothing. The "beauty of holiness" is sometimes translated the "attire of holiness," a less poetic but not unfair reading. Individual pieces of clothing may be beautiful ("noam") with their own colors and patterns, but style (and occasionally fashion) comes from arranging ("hadarah") these pieces together into a single, stylish ensemble.

There are more examples I could give: a stained-glass window, the human body, and even the Bible itself are all examples of separate, individual beauties ("noam") brought together to make a beautiful arrangement ("hadarah"). The overall point, however, can be summarized in three startling thoughts: (1) God's beauty is for the senses; (2) beauty belongs to order, and the greater the order the greater the beauty; and (3) holiness is a kind of beauty, a "hadarah" beauty, an arranging of single beauties into a magnificent whole. Perhaps it is the greatest beauty of all, since it is the beauty that belongs to God, a beauty that our sense are capable of beholding and desire to behold.

"When shall I come and see the face of God?"

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Twelve Days of Christmas (sort of)

Classic Christmas cheer from "Straight No Chaser":

Advent Homily: Salvation is of the Law (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; He will save us." Is. 33:22

Here we see two simple yet staunch truths, one offensive and the other startling (and perhaps even more offensive). The offensive truth is that God, far from being a mere authority, is revealed as the absolute authority (of Israel specifically and by extension all things). The titles that He is given in this verse form a pattern that shows His authority to be all-encompassing.

As the "judge," He is the one who enforces the law: He passes sentence either to vindicate or punish, to deliver or destroy. As the "lawgiver," He is the one who makes the law: He (literally in Hebrew) "engraves" the law on tablets of stone, declaring forever what is right and wrong, just and unjust. And as the "king," He is the Law: He embodies its very essence and is its very reality, for the law is not the result of His arbitrary whims but the reflection of His perfect character. In sum, He is all-in-one the application of the reflection of the will that made and maintains and runs and rules all things. He is the one who is greater than us: greater than our notions and nations, greater than all our fads and fashions, greater than all our meta-narratives or private interpretations, and greater than all our Sin.

That last phrase points to the more starting truth: "He will save us." What's startling about this is that His identity as Savior is a direct result of His identity as the Absolute Authority. To put it simply, He can save us because He is in charge, because He has the power and the right to do so. Now, we often treat salvation as a category unto itself: God does save us, maybe not in spite of Himself, but at least in isolation from Himself, as though God took a holiday from His other attributes. ("Despite His sense of justice and holiness, God saved us anyway.") Scripture shows such well-intended thinking to be false: God's role as Savior is right in line and in accord with all His attributes, viz., His role as Absolute Authority. It is all linked together in one brilliant pattern that is God.

I suspect that we do not like this. Of course, we do not like the idea of absolute authority, but how much less will we like the idea of absolute authority being the grounds for heroism? It is bad enough that we have a king, but now we find that only the king can save us. And why? Because we have broken the law. Rebellion will not save us; rebellion is what's killing us. It is the height of idiocy to say that we must rebel against God in order to be free. We have rebelled against God, and we are not free but instead are enslaved to other masters, ones armed with cruel hate: the Devil and Sin and Death. It is vain to speak of questioning authority; we have questioned it. It is vain to speak of transgressing the boundaries; we have transgressed them. We have breached the wall, we have scaled the city, we have cast down the thrones of universal law, and we have paid for it with our souls, for in Adam we all died (I Cor. 15:22a), and all our talk is the rigor mortis setting in further and further and further. This rot will be purged with wrath, and we will be consumed in the purging, for the wages of Sin is death (Rom. 6:23a).

The only one who can save us from the wrath of the law is the Law Himself, the Law-giver and Law-applier, the only one who knows how to satisfy it. And He did satisfy it. He breached the walls of our insurrection to satisfy it. He mingled with the dust so that He might rebel against our rebellion. For this He was manifested: that He might destroy the works of the Devil (I John 3:8), the scheming, lying, son of perdition, whose trick have wasted the world. The King of kings met our anarchy with a little Anarchy of his own: the anarchy of righteousness against evil, of light against darkness, of order against chaos. That is the meaning of Christmas: the Law is our Savior, the King is our Hero. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

In the Name of Peace and Quietness (an Advent post by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

The following is from Dorothy Sayer's essay "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged," from the book Letters to a Diminished Church:

[The Incarnation] is not just a pious commonplace; it is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man---limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death---[God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

[...]

Possibly we might prefer not to take this tale too seriously---there are disquieting points about it. Here we had a man of divine character walking and talking among us---and what did we find to do with him? The common people, indeed, "heard him gladly," but our leading authorities in Church and State considered that he talked too much and uttered too many disconcerting truths. So we bribed one of his friends to hand him over quietly to the police, and we tried him on a rather vague charge of creating a disturbance, and had him publicly flogged and hanged on the common gallows, "thanking God we were rid of a knave." All this was not very creditable to us, even if he was (as many people thought and think) only a harmless, crazy preacher. But if the Church is right about him, it was more discreditable still, for the man we hanged was God Almighty.

[...]

If this is dull, then what, in Heaven's name, is worthy to be exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore. [O]n the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggests a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand.

True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites. He referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, [then] there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had "a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly," and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness.

 

Gravity and Kittens (some Advent thoughts by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Continuing our Advent posts this season, here we have an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. In the first chapter of the second section (called "The God in the Cave"), Chesterton talks about the unique qualities of Christmas and how no other religion or philosophy in the world could have produced it. Here is a small sampling. I encourage you to sometime read the whole chapter.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other: the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, [even] when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection. For him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God.

But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians; because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones.

In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There really is a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Muslim or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet.

 

 

The Lonely Maker (some Advent poetry by an Original Orthodox Rebel)

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, the Christmas season can officially begin. (That's right: I'm a purist. Don't hate.) In light of this and in honor of the season, I'll be sprinkling my blog with an occasional "Advent post," starting with this excerpt from George MacDonald's Diary of an Old Soul.

I do remember how one time I thought,

"God must be lonely--oh, so lonely lone!

I will be very good to him--ah, nought

Can reach the heart of his great loneliness!

My whole heart I will bring him, with a moan

That I may not come nearer; I will lie prone

Before the awful loveliness of loneliness' excess."

A God must have a God for company.

And lo, thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.

Thou honor'st his obedience, he thy law.

Into thy secret life-will he doth see;

Thou fold'st him round in live love perfectly--

One two, without beginning, without end;

In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without flaw.

Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care

For times and seasons--but this one glad day

Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights

That flash in the girdle of the year so fair--

When thou wast born a man, because alway

Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights

Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.

We all are lonely, Maker--each a soul

Shut in by itself, a sundered atom of thee.

No two yet loved themselves into a whole;

Even when we weep together we are two.

Of two to make one, which yet two shall be,

Is thy creation's problem, deep, and true,

To which thou only hold'st the happy, hurting clue.

No less than thou, O Father, do we need

A God to friend each lonely one of us.

As touch not in the sack two grains of seed,

Touch no two hearts in great worlds populous.

Outside the making God we cannot meet.

Him he has made our brother; homeward, thus,

To find our kin we first must turn our wandering feet.

It must be possible that the soul made

Should absolutely meet the soul that makes;

Then, in that bearing soul, meet every other

There also born, each sister and each brother.

Lord, till I meet thee thus, life is delayed;

I am not I until that morning breaks,

Not I until my consciousness eternal wakes.

[...]

Go, my beloved children, live your life.

Wounded, faint, bleeding, never yield the strife.

Stunned, fallen-awake, arise, and fight again.

Before you victory stands with shining train

Of hopes not credible until they are.

Beyond morass and mountain swells the star

Of perfect love--the home of longing heart and brain.

 

 

Child of the Star (a Christmastide poem by an orthodox rebel)

"And ye know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin." I John 3:5

"Into the depths and the deep degrees.
Into the flesh with its feeble knees.
From Light of lights into darkest stain.
From divine delights to a world of pain.

Into the coal came the burning spark.
Into the night came a thund'ring heart.
From out of the crib and the cattle smell,
Child of the star walked into our hell.

Shining star with it growing light.
Shepherd's hill where they felt the fright.
The angel's song did yet surmise
This night of nights was the dark's demise.

Little cry from the manger hay.
Thirty years is all that He could stay.
The darkest day where the pain was long
Where the cross crescendoed the angel's song.

Into the pits of our despair.
Into the teeth of the demon's lair.
Into the wound only He could heal.
Into the hearts only He could steal.

Out of the depths and the deep degrees.
Still in the flesh without feeble knees.
We are His and He is ours.
Sons of God and children of the Star."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010

"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" (a favorite Christmastide carol of an orthodox rebel)

"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is probably my favorite Christmas carol. The sadness and beauty of the sounds mixed with the depth of its theology affects me deeply every time. Here you can find the lyrics and tune, and here is one of my favorite renditions of it by Fernando Ortega:

A Christmastide Homily (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

The following was original posted on my Jesu Juva blog in Novermber of 2008.

"[Lucifer is] the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners." Isaiah 14:16b, 17

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord hath appointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound, [...] to comfort them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.... I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God...." Isaiah 61:1, 3a, 10a

"For this purpose the Son of God was manifested: that He might destroy the works of the devil." I John 3:8b

To see Jesus as a social revolutionary is an injustice and a crime against the Gospel. To see Him as a mere statement of Divine sentimentality is a blasphemous hatred against the Gospel. To see Him as a cash cow, a cosmic ATM, is to rob the Gospel of all power and glory. To see Him as the liberator from cruel governments of men is to be as confused and disappointed at His coming as the Jews who eventually killed Him were. If you see and preach Christ as anything less or other than the propitiation for the Sin of the world, as the revelation of God's holy wrath and loving kindness, as the only mediator between God and man, as the Destroyer of all evil and corruption caused since the Fall, and as the Kinsman Redeemer of all men who have fallen, then you blaspheme and disgrace the work and name of our Lord, and we have no part in you, for what fellowship has light with darkness? Indeed, if you preach any gospel other than that which proclaims the forgiveness of sins and atonement of men back to God through the shed blood of Christ, then you are merely adding to the darkness that already blinds so many. Every breath you breathe that carries with it your false gospel sends unholy fog across the souls of men, furthering their natural obscurity, so that the true light is even harder to find. In the end, you will be one of the ones mentioned in Matthew 7:21-23; you will have your reward.

The lost and lonely people of this dying world do not need a social revolutionary. They do not need beautiful phrases of sentimentality. They do not need a cosmic ATM. They do not need a usurping liberator. They do not need a guru, an enlightened one, a homeboy, a co-pilot, or a moral mentor; they need a savior. They need the awesome and terrible truth that God is there, He is not silent, and He has come to us, "His arm [has] brought salvation...the Redeemer [has] come to Zion" (Isaiah 59:15, 20). This world needs good news that transcends and outlasts all cultures, kingdoms, fashions, and fads; news that is good no matter what social, cultural, political, or religious environment you live in. This world needs a saving truth that is the same for all at all times no matter what happens, and that truth has always been: God is, God loves, and God can be found. 

-Jon Vowell (c) 2008

Earth Stood Still (a Christmastide carol by Current Orthodox Rebels)

An original Christmas song from the new Advent Christmas EP, Vol. 2 by Future of Forestry:

Chesterton, Colebatch, and the Glastonbury Thorn (Christmastide news and thoughts by an aussie author)

The following is an article written for The American Spectator by Hal G.P. Colebatch. He is writing in reference to the Glastonbury Thorn tree and the most recent vandalism against it. I found Dr. Colebatch's thoughts (and Chesterton's sayings) to be quite moving and encouraging.

The other week in Britain the Glastonbury Thorn Tree was destroyed by persons unknown. It was a scrubby, undistinguished-looking tree. Few trees have had such links with high religious mystery.

It is said to be in its origins 2,000 years old and to have direct links with Christ. According to legend it is either sprung from the Crown of Thorns or from seeds planted by Joseph of Arimathea, who, according to the Gospel, gave his tomb to hold Christ's body.

In fact it is historically possibly, if not particularly likely, that Joseph of Arimathea visited England. Archeological evidence shows that England had considerable trade with Europe before being absorbed into the Roman Empire after 43 A.D. and travel in the Roman World was relatively easy.

Although the story of Joseph of Arimathea is encrusted with legends, he is described by St. Mark as an "honorable counselor" in Judea and may have been a wealthy merchant.

Whether or not there is any truth in any of the many legends that have grown about the tree is in a sense unimportant. It has been at the very least a place of contemplation.

The important fact is that the Glastonbury Thorn, like Glastonbury itself (Glastonbury Abbey is one reputed burial-place of King Arthur), has been a focus for Christian beliefs in England since ancient times. It had, over the centuries, become a site of pilgrimage, and a cutting from the tree was sent to the Queen to decorate her Christmas dinner table every year.

Glastonbury is also a seat of the legend of the Holy Grail. Many have remarked on a feeling of uncanniness about it.

The thorn tree is said to have flowered on Christmas Day every year for the last two millennia.

G. K. Chesterton, in "The Ballad of the White Horse," telling of Alfred the Great's defense against the marauding and destroying Viking barbarians, referred to:

The Earls of the Great Army
That no men born could tire,

Whose flames anear him or aloof

Took hold of towers and walls of proof,

Fire over Glastonbury roof

And out on Ely, fire …

The fires of the Great Army

That was made of iron men,

Whose lights of sacrilege and scorn

Ran around England red as morn,
Fire over Glastonbury Thorn--

Fire out on Ely Fen.

The destruction of the tree may have been mindless vandalism or a deliberate attack on a symbol of, and aid to, Christian faith -- and there are plenty of anti-Christian fanatics in Britain today (when both convicts and police, as well as members of the remaining armed forces, are, in the name of political correctness, given time off to observe pagan rituals). Or possibly the target was British history and identity, which has been under attack from many quarters, including official ones, in recent times.

Whoever did it went to a good deal of trouble because the tree was protected by a wire fence. Further, the fact that the destruction took place on December 8 suggests those responsible were well aware of the significance of the tree. This has traditionally been the date on which a sprig was cut from it to present to the Queen.

Whatever the motive behind the destruction was, if the tree is lost then something at the core of Western civilization has been diminished. In "The Ballad of the White Horse," Alfred, looking at the senseless destruction and waste caused by the barbarians, tells them:

Therefore your end is on you,
Is on you and your kings,
Not for a fire in Ely fen,
Not that your gods are nine or ten,
But because it is only Christian men
Guard even heathen things.

The branches were sawn off the tree and piled nearby but a six-foot stump remains. There is apparently some hope the tree may be saved. Tree-surgeons have dressed the tree's wounds in pine resin and beeswax and it has been wrapped up to protect it from the frost. Arborist Peter Wood Frearson was quoted as saying: "I am 75 per cent sure the tree will survive."

Religious fanatics have attacked the tree previously, but it has proved very hard to kill. During the English Civil War Oliver Cromwell's Puritan Roundheads felled the tree. However locals salvaged the roots of the original tree, hiding them in secret locations around Glastonbury.

Various shoots of it were raised and tended over several centuries and it was replanted on the hill in 1951.

Many people have been distressed by the destruction of the tree. However in "The Ballad of the White Horse" Chesterton had Alfred give an answer to the barbarians' destruction:

For our God hath blessed creation,
Calling it good. I know
The spirit with whom you blindly band
Hath blessed destruction with his hand;
Yet by God's death the stars still stand
And the small apples grow.

And, after all, he did win the final battle.

The Moonlit Statues on a Winter's Eve (a Christmastide poem by an orthodox rebel)

"The criss-crossed frost can etch its way
Under shadow of the sky that escaped the day.

On the grim-cracked faces of the iron men
It covers o'er their fingers and fills each grin.

Ne'er ever was there an air so nice
As the night death-throes and the burning ice."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010