Whose image do we bear?

Texts:  Exodus 33.12-23; 1 Thessalonians 1.1-10; Matthew 22.15-22

The Greeks tell of a fellow named Narcissus.  He was very handsome and loved to go down to the waterhole and gaze at his own likeness in the pond's surface.  After a while he became so enamoured of the image gazing back at him that he forgot himself and tried to embrace the handsome fellow in the water.  Of course he fell into the pond, the handsome image disappeared in an explosion of broken fragments, and Narcissus drowned.  

Our own society, like Narcissus, is obsessed with images and illusions.  The media bombard us with images of shiny happy people in shiny happy settings with shiny happy cars and houses and friends and bank accounts.  But all this is illusion.  It has almost nothing to do with the real lives that each of us live in the flesh.  Social media, which have become the dominant mediator of these images, are rarely a mirror which reflects who we are and how we behave.  It is we who have become the mirror, the pond surface, which now reflects back the world imagined by social media, a world in which a person’s ultimate value depends entirely on how many ‘likes’ or other responses they can marshal in response to whatever fashionable fiction they are presenting about either themselves or the world. When this virtual world of images and illusions becomes more 'real' than the world of flesh and blood and bodies—bodies that are able to feel and know and breathe the air—then something has gone tragically wrong.  Because when flesh and blood people seek to escape their mortal conditions in favour of a world of fashionable surfaces and manufactured happiness, we also lose our capacity for soul, for value and for meaning.  Like Narcissus, we awake to a reality which is so far away from who we really are, that we find ourselves 'all at sea', drowning in a tragic forgetfulness concerning who and what we are for God.

I suspect that when Matthew tells the story about Jesus and the image of Caesar on a coin, he is already reflecting upon a version of these same difficulties.  You see the people who approached Jesus to ask about paying taxes to the invading superpower, were themselves caught in a kind of twilight zone between reality and fashion.  They were the leaders of two significant political parties in Israel at the time, the Pharisees and the Herodians.  On the one hand, they wanted to see themselves as servants of Israel's God, people who bore the image and likeness of God in their bodies and, indeed, in all the business of life.  On the other hand, they wanted to present themselves as servants of the Emperor, whose image and insignia were everywhere in this occupied country—a constant reminded that Caesar would tolerate no rivals for the people's hearts and minds.  

Jesus sees the ambivalence of his interrogators immediately.  The one who, in his sermon on the mount, had said 'you cannot serve two masters . . .  you cannot serve both God and Mammon' sees immediately their predilection for doing just that.  So, he calls them 'hypocrites' because they are people who think that they can remain children of God, made in his image and likeness, even while they reach out to inscribe themselves with the image and likeness of the Imperium.  So, when Jesus says 'Give to the Emperor the things that are the Emperor's, and to God the things that are God's' he is certainly not being ambivalent.  In the context of Matthew's gospel as a whole, and the Sermon on the Mount in particular, it is clear that Jesus is issuing a challenge to his hearers, as well as to us: Whose image do we bear in this world?  Who do we seek to imitate?  Do we bear the image of the Emperor, seeking only to be what the dominant politics and commerce would make of us?  Or do we bear the image and likeness of God, who created us as free human people, purposed to love God and neighbour with a deep and liberating love?  Whose image do you bear?  According to Matthew, none of us may bear both.  We must all choose either one or the other.

But what does it really mean to reject the illusions begotten by worldly empires and bear, instead, the image of God?  When Moses returned from Sinai, having sat in the fiery presence of a fiery God for forty days and forty nights, his face shone (we are told) with the glory of the Maker.  One might say that his body was indelibly marked with the image of God's awesome presence and power.  Now much of Christian tradition has represented this moment in the highly romantic images of a Cecil B. de Mille movie, which has Moses coming down the mountain a taller, and somehow more majestic and mystical figure than when he ascended.  I really doubt, however, that this is really the impression that the writers of Exodus wanted to create.  Elsewhere in Exodus, God is represented as a consuming fire who first appears to Moses in a burning bush, and then destroys the firstborn of Egypt, and then leads the people through the wilderness in the form of a fiery pillar.  When the people arrive at Sinai, God makes it clear that it is very, very dangerous to come into his presence.  For his holiness is like a fire which consumes all that is not holy.  The people are commanded, therefore, to make their camp some distance from the mountain where the fire has come to rest.  

All of this creates in my mind the impression that Moses' glowing face, far from being transfigured after the manner of Jesus in the gospels, is more likely to have been burned or seared by the fire of God’s holiness, purged and purified as if by a refiner’s fire, so that he comes away not only with the wonderful commands of the covenant, but also with the face of a saint who, by a long struggle with God and his darkest self, now bears the wounds of an encounter with holiness.  Theologically speaking, Moses might then be understood to bear the image of God in a way which speaks of salvation through struggle and loss—a state of liberation and joy only attainable by human beings if they are willing to submit themselves to the refining fire of God's love.

Bearing the image of our God, you see, is both glorious and painful.  It is glorious, as Paul says to the Thessalonians, because it bears witness to our release from the false images and idols of this world, and to our newfound freedom and joy in the Spirit of God.  But it is also painful, because the true image of God creates controversy and persecution for all who bear it.  And this is clear from the story of Jesus himself.  No-one bore the true image and likeness of God so perfectly as Jesus our Lord.  The great hymns of Colossians and Hebrews call him the true ikon or image of the Creator, the exact representation of God’s being.  But bearing God's image clearly did not exempt Jesus from the storms of human fragility and pain.  Indeed, if one takes the message of the gospels seriously, it is clear that Jesus suffered and died precisely because he bore God's image, because he loved the poor and the godless with such a genuine sincerity and compassion, because he showed in his own being and behaviour the height and depth and breadth of God's love for our world.  Because of these things he was persecuted, tortured and murdered.  Wherever the true image of God's love and mercy is present, you see, the economic and political powers become very, very paranoid.  And they lash out to destroy it. 

Friends, let me summarize what I am saying to you very simply.  To bear the image and likeness of God is to love, and keep on loving, for God is love.  There is freedom and joy and peace in this, a peace which goes deep, like a river, to satisfy our longings and quench our thirst.  But there is also pain.  Paul said to the Galatians 'may I never boast of anything, save the cross of the Lord, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the life of the world' (6.14).  This 'world' of which Paul speaks is not the world of mountains and streams and all in human culture that it noble or beautiful or true.  It is the world of lies, of the false images of the good life; it is the world where the weakest and most vulnerable are trashed in the wine-press of corporate greed and nationalist paranoia.  If we are people who bear the image of a loving God to a world such as this, then we must expect that they will try to crucify us.  And we must be prepared to crucify those false images and idols in ourselves by confession, prayer and the worship of the crucified One.

Be of good courage, my friends. Be of good courage you imitators of Christ.  For the one who was crucified is risen!  In the power of his resurrection, Christ overcame the world, and created for us the space to love and be loved in the eternal circle-dance of the Trinity.  In his power, and for the sake of the world he loves, we are called to bear his image in these jars of clay, and to bear in our bodies the scars of Christ's compassion.  It is a high and difficult calling.  No doubt. But God is faithful.  I am convinced that neither height or depth, nor angels, nor demons, nor powers, not principalities, nor the present, nor the future, will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

Garry Deverell

The Three 'Christmases'

In contemporary Australian experience there are actually three kinds of 'Christmas' celebration. In this short article I’d like to describe each of them, with a view to distinguishing a genuinely Christian way of doing Christmas.

1. Yuletide

The first kind is arguably the oldest, because it takes its inspiration from the pre-Christian midwinter festivals of the Germanic and Nordic peoples.  This festival, known in its Anglicised form as 'Yuletide', apparently culminated in a three-day celebration encompassing the winter solstice at which much ale was consumed, animal sacrifices were made and the blood of sacrifice sprinkled over representations of the gods as well as over their worshippers. The meat of the sacrificed animals became food for the feast. Toasts were dedicated to Odin, the king of the gods, to Njörðr and Freyr for good harvest, to dead ancestors, and to the chieftain who presided at the feast. Scholars have connected these events to the Wild Hunt led by Odin through the night sky to kill a sacred boar or stag, which signified the taking of life at midwinter which had the power to inaugurate the return of life with the oncoming spring. 

Contemporary neo-pagans are both reviving and creating Yuletide traditions which emphasise the cyclic nature of fertility in the natural world. They point out that many elements of contemporary 'Christmas' celebrations probably have their roots in paganism, including Santa Claus and his reindeer (Odin or Freyr on the Wild Hunt), Elves or other magic folk who give or seek gifts (symbols of the presence of magic or the 'other world' on midwinter's eve), Christmas trees (evergreen to signify the eternal power of life returning from death), mistletoe (the key ingredient in a druidic fertility drink), the roasting of a pig (a vestige of the tradition of fertility sacrifices), and the prolific use of the colours red (signifying sacrificial blood) and white (representing midwinter).

2. Christmastide

At least as old, perhaps, is the Christian festival of Christmastide, which celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ to Mary in Bethlehem as the Son of God and saviour of all the world.  Although never as important as Eastertide in the Christian imagination, there is clear evidence that a festival surrounding Christ's birth was beginning to take shape in the ancient Near East as early as the 3rd century CE.  Contrary to much public opinion, there is no evidence that the early candidates for Christ's birthday (December 25 and January 6) were chosen to coincide with pagan midwinter festivals in either the south or the north of Europe.  More likely is Andrew McGowan's proposal that since ancient Christians believed that Christ was conceived on the same day as his death (roughly March 25) he must therefore have been born on December 25.  

Between the 4th and 12th centuries, celebrations of the Nativity of Christ alternated between December 25 and January 6th. The latter date was celebrated in the Eastern church as the Epiphany (or 'manifestation') of Christ as Son and Messiah of God at his baptism.  Eventually, in the Western rite, Christmastide became a season that spanned the days between the eve of January 25 (when Luke's birth narrative about Angels and shepherds is featured) and the feast of the Epiphany (which, in the Western church, became the day when Matthew's birth narrative about Herod and the Magi from the East was ritualised as the first manifestation of Christ to all non-Jewish people).  Christians have long celebrated the season with joyful liturgies of word, carol and sacrament occurring on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, the Sundays of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany (whenever it variously occurs). The one note of sobriety within the season is usually reserved for the Feast of the Holy Innocents (Dec 27 or 28) which commemorates the infanticide visited by Herod on the children of Bethlehem at hearing that a Messiah had been born.  Contemporary churches in the ecumenical tradition often connect this event with the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, and therefore with the plight of refugees fleeing oppression and persecution in the modern world.

The period now known as 'Advent', beginning from the 4th Sunday before the Feast of the Nativity, probably began with a desire to prepare for Christmas in a way that paralleled the long-established practice of preparing for Easter baptisms with forty days of prayer, fasting, exorcism and theological reflection. In this spirit, the primary theme of Advent eventually became not the 'first' coming of Christ at Bethlehem, but Christian hopes for a 'second' coming of Christ at the end of the ages, when all that is evil and unjust in the world will finally be put to rights.  Advent therefore encourages Christians to consider their experience of hope - the 'not yet' of faithful expectation - and asks them what God would call them to do by way of prayerful self-transformation and common human service as they wait for the grace and justice of God to be revealed in all its surprising fulness. 

The origin of gift-giving at Christmastide is unclear. Some surmise that the practise was taken over from pagan mid-winter festivals when offerings of food were given to the gods or else to vengeful ancestors in order to guarantee their blessing for the year to come.  A more likely origin is strictly theological: gifts are given to the poor and marginalised in imitation of God's gift of Christ to all who are poor, broken or despised by the world. This theology is certainly at play in the story of St Nicholas of Myrna, whose feast day is celebration on December 6.  St Nicholas is said to have distributed alms to the poor and desperate of his diocese anonymously, under the cover of night.  The migration of this tradition to the English-speaking world also seem to have effected a migration of St Nicholas' gift-giving to the Eve of the Nativity, perhaps under the influence of some of the pagan traditions we note above about Odin or Freyr. Certainly, the modern Santa Claus myth created by American advertisers owes more to pagan than Christian sources.

3. Consumertide

Christmas as it is celebrated in contemporary Australia certainly owes more to the re-weaving of traditional devotional practices by capitalism than it does to anything that is more genuinely pagan or Christian.  Capitalism is like a magpie that seeks to feather its own nest by stealing the treasures of others. And 'Christmas' has become the most prominent example of this. A consumer festival that begins in early November and continues through to the early weeks of January, this 'Christmas' evokes traditional religious practices and desires, but transforms and channels them for its own overriding purpose: to produce profits.

The new 'Christmas' temples are neither pagan nor Christian but vast shopping centres like that at Chadstone in Victoria.  If you visit these temples you are strongly encouraged to participate in the worship of Capital.  The sound-systems spew forth sentimental 'carols' that evoke traditional religious feeling, but redirect that feeling toward buying.  Carefully prepared 'Christmas' pantomimes are filled with elves, fairies and Father Christmases who have the power to grant one's every wish. Instead of encouraging worshippers to surrender themselves or their livelihoods to Christ or to those most beloved of Christ (the poor and marginalised) like St Nichlas of Myrna, the rituals associated with Santa Claus encourage consumers to buy gifts solely because either they or their loved-ones desire them. For Christmas is now almost exclusively about 'family' - the pilgrimage to far-flung family, spending time with family, spending money on family, feeding one’s family - and all to the most hideous levels of excess.  Obscenely, to my mind, the multi-billion-dollar industry that provides Christmas wrappings, tree ornaments and decorations, is run almost entirely off the back of cheap- child- or slave-labour in vast manufacturing compounds found in China, India, Mexico and Bangladesh.  

The consumertide which is the modern Australian 'Christmas' allows no room for those spiritual disciplines associated with Advent, disciplines like prayer, waiting, and fasting - all of which are about NOT getting or having what you most desire. Indeed, what these disciplines traditionally inspired and encouraged was the transformation of human desire into the more holy desire of God, thereby bringing light, love and hope to those in most need of such things. Consequently, Advent as Advent has been completely obliterated.  Advent has become simply another part of the consumertide that is 'Christmas', a season of feasting, buying, gift-giving, and sentimental storytelling about the importance of enriching one’s own family. It is no longer about a disciplined waiting for the grace of God made known in Jesus. And this is increasingly the case not only in the many 'evangelical' protestant churches that have most always followed the deepest impulses of secularism, but also in the ecumenical churches that are supposedly committed to the disciplines preserved in the observance of the liturgical year. Even in these churches, Christmas very often arrives in the first or second weeks of Advent, with parties and carol-singing and nativity festivals as far as the eye can see.

Conclusion

It seems to me that Christians are faced with a choice at Advent and Christmastide. Either to be carried along by the tide of neopagan and consumerist desire or else to choose the disciplines preserved in the genuinely Christian liturgical year. For these disciplines, if we listen and participate in them fully, teach us who the God of love is, what we are worth in God's estimation, and what the world could be if we would only give ourselves over to God's desire, rather than our own.  And that, I submit, would make all the difference in the world.