Slideshow image

William Blake once wrote that it would be wonderful "to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour”. Many years later another English poet, John Betjeman, did just that in his poem “Christmas".  In the simplest of language, he expressed the infinite depths of meaning in what we Christians call the Incarnation, the coming into the world of the Divine in human form. Listen to him..

And is it true? and is it true?

This most tremendous tale of all.

Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,

A baby in an ox's stall?

The maker of the stars and sea

Become a child on earth for me?  

 

No love that in a family dwells, 

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple shaking bells

Can with this single truth compare,

That God was Man in Palestine

And comes today in Bread and Wine. 

There you have two wonderful contrasts. First - A baby in an ox’s stall becomes the Maker of the stars and seas. Then we encounter the long-ago Jesus of Palestine in the timeless sacrament placed in our hands at Eucharist.  

I sometimes think that one of the problems for Christian faith today is that we have become anaesthetized to its wonder through being over familiar with it. So for years now I have found myself on a kind of quest, to discover and to treasure moments when someone succeeds in capturing what I once heard Michael Ramsay, then Archbishop of Canterbury, call “the Story and the Glory" of Christian faith. The Story, he said, is so simple it can be told to a child, the Glory is so boundless that the greatest of philosophers cannot fully probe its depths. For me, John Benjamin's deceptive simplicity captures the profundity.  

Another such moment of realization. I recall standing in the Dean's stall of Christ Church Cathedral Vancouver, finding myself deeply moved as a full Cathedral sang an old Welsh carol, and I realized that the words had captured both the Story and the Glory in language immensely powerful yet utterly simple. 

All poor folk and humble,

All lame folk who stumble,

come haste ye and be not afraid;

for Jesus our treasure,

whose love passes measure,

in lowly poor manger is laid. 

 

And he shall reign ever,

and nothing shall sever 

from us the great love of our king;

His peace and his pity

Shall bless his fair city;

His praises we ever shall sing. 

In the first verse the tiny child lies in the manger. In the second he has become the Lord of Time itself, ruling an everlasting kingdom. 

For me there are other such moments remembered. I was listening as a young soloist sang that lovely carol "I wonder as I wander out under the sky”. Halfway through the third stanza I noticed the shift from the earthly to the heavenly, from utter simplicity to deep mystery.

When Mary birth'd Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall

with wise men and farmers and shepherds and all, 

but high from God's heaven a star’s light did fall; 

 the promise of ages it then did recall.

Again, I heard the haunting qualities of contrast. First the village girl who would for millions become Queen of Heaven, then we find our common humanity among farmers and shepherds, then we are suddenly borne away into the vast surrounding ocean of the stars. Once again, the Story and the Glory. 

Over the years there have of course been other moments seized before they vanished from memory, but then a bouquet can only be so big! A last captured moment that captures both the Story and the Glory. Back in the sixties Thomas Merton wrote a poem he entitled “Carol”.

God's glory now is kindled 

gentler than low candlelight

Under the rafters of a barn:

Eternal peace is sleeping in the hay, 

And Wisdom's born in secret 

In a straw-roofed stable.

Notice the beauty of the thought that even a candle can be the bearer of God's Eternal Light, that a wooden manger carries a human child who is the embodiment of Eternal Peace, and in the shadows of a stable the voice of Divine Wisdom speaks God's Eternal Truth. 

Maybe we should spare a moment to taste again those immortal images of Blake. What he said really applies to the whole world of worship. To worship is "to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour”. 

A Blessed Christmas to you and those whom you love.