This is the final of the three addresses I gave at the recent ‘Bethlehem Bound Quiet Day’. Have a very happy Christmas. There won’t be a Living God blog until Sunday 8 January.

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Lord of the journey,
with Mary and Joseph,
with shepherds and Wise Men,
we are Bethlehem Bound.
Bring us with them
to worship before Jesus
baby, brother, Lord and Saviour
and so make every journey
a walk with you.
Amen.

We have set off and we have arrived. But what did we come for, why were we Bethlehem Bound? There are still people travelling after Mary and Joseph had arrived at the inn, still people heading in this direction and they have all yet to arrive. But what have we come for?

The amazing church of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is a riot of imagery and astonishing in its design. The original architect Antonio Gaudi was eccentric, revolutionary and fiercely faithful to the catholic tradition in which he was raised and in which he lived and so tragically died. His church would be a sermon in stone, a creedal statement for all to see. What he designed amongst the incredible towers and spires were three main facades only two of which have been completed. But these two facades are the most important as far as I’m concerned – although it will be amazing to see the Glory façade if I’m still alive when that is finally done.

But visitors today are met by an eastern façade, the first to be completed, dedicated to the incarnation and the western façade dedicated to the passion. These are the fulcrums of our faith, the two doctrines that shape all that we believe and all that we do as Christians – the doctrine of the incarnation and the doctrine of redemption, of our salvation. The crib and the cross as much as the empty tomb are what we are about.

In the year 325 the first Ecumenical Council of the church was called. It met in a place called Nicaea, but whilst that city no longer exists as it then did and whilst it happened such a long long time ago the name of that Council lives on in the creed which is attributed to it – the Nicene Creed – that we most often say and especially when we are gathering to celebrate the Eucharist.

As a little chorister I learnt to sing the Creed to the Merbecke setting- Merbecke himself was tried for heresy in the retrochoir of the Cathedral and was found guilty – as one of the first things that I did. If I say the version of the Nicene Creed that we find in the Book of Common Prayer, then it is accompanied by a tune in my head.

The Nicene Creed that flowed out of the Council of Nicaea, called to answer the challenges that Arianism was creating, something that was declared a heresy by the decisions of the Council, decided on our understanding of the incarnation, that Jesus Christ is both truly and fully divine, and truly and fully human, that just as his death would be declared to be a real death, as our death will be, so the birth of Jesus was a real birth, just as our birth was. As the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews puts it

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things. (Hebrews 2.14)

The ‘he’ in this verse is Jesus, who the writer says, can call us sisters and brothers because he fully shares our nature. And this is why I love Christmas, this is why I am Bethlehem Bound each year, this is why I travel to the manger with so many others, it is because in those incredible words of St John in his Preface to his gospel

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1.14)

In such profound simplicity John describes the enormity of what we believe. As the Council of Nicaea asked us to say and as we say every Sunday, together, as the people of God, as the sisters and brothers of Jesus, who share the same flesh and blood

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.

And on Christmas Day, in those places where we do such things, at the words of the incarnatus we fall to our knees. There is nothing else we can do in the face of this magnum mysterium, this great mystery of the faith, that the godhead could be located in a baby, in a manger, within the created order and a tiny child could speak with the voice of God.

This is what Gaudi attempts to do in his great façade. At the heart of the wall of the incarnation is the Holy family but around it are all those who travel to Bethlehem to see this great thing, the shepherds and the wise men, the sheep and the other animals and the angels, so many of them, singing and blowing their trumpets. It is simply glorious because it is simply glorious.

I have been tantalising you with the poem ‘Little Gidding’ by T S Eliot. The poem is much longer than the section that I have been quoting from, but let me just add a bit more to what I have already read to you.

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city–
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Those words are so powerful and these for me particularly so as we reflect on the incarnation

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel

We kneel at the incarnatus because what else can we do? The principal response we make as we lift the latch and enter through that door, the place of our arrival, the end of the journey, is to kneel and adore him. We are drawn into the heart of mystery and into the heart of worship at the manger and at the altar.

I also promised you that I would return to Frances Chesterton’s beautiful poem which Howell sets with such gentleness.

 
Here is the little door,
lift up the latch, oh lift!
We need not wander more,
but enter with our gift;
Our gift of finest gold.
Gold that was never bought or sold;
Myrrh to be strewn about his bed;
Incense in clouds about His head;
All for the child that stirs not in His sleep,
But holy slumber hold with ass and sheep.

Bend low about His bed,
For each He has a gift;
See how His eyes awake,
Lift up your hands, O lift!
For gold, He gives a keen-edged sword.
(Defend with it thy little Lord!)
For incense, smoke of battle red,
Myrrh for the honoured happy dead;
Gifts for His children, terrible and sweet;
Touched by such tiny hands,
and Oh such tiny feet.

We need not wander more … bend low about his bed.

People are surprised when they come to this cathedral that it is not like other cathedrals. ‘Why did you build it next to a railway line?’ asked one trans-Atlantic visitor of one of our cathedral guides. The place is cheek by jowl with life. The market has been here a thousand years, the traders selling their wares. The bridge has been delivering visitors to the City since the Romans had their settlement there. The river has been carrying people and things, discharging merry makers and cargo. The theatres were performing the plays and scandalising the church with their cross-dressing naughtiness. All life was here and all life is here, around the churchyard, pressing in from every side and disturbing and disrupting life. And that is how it should be. For me, as Dean, it is a sheer joy that the church is in this deeply incarnational setting, that we should be disturbed and disrupted by life. Because this is why ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’, both to experience and to add to the disruption.

‘God became man so that man might become god.’ These words of St Athanasius sum up the mystery of the Incarnation. This is what we celebrate at Christmas, and it is the source of our great joy. The Incarnation changes everything, because God is love and it is love that we find at the end of the journey, pure love incarnated, made flesh, for you and for me.

We have come a long way, together, with God, who also was Bethlehem Bound, entering into the human story in a way which changes each of our stories, fundamentally changes our understanding of the nature of God.

As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware wrote in his famous book ‘The Orthodox Way’

Christ shares to the full in what we are, and so he makes it possible for us to share in what he is, in his divine life and glory. He became what we are, so as to make us what he is. … Christ’s riches are his eternal glory; Christ’s poverty is his complete self-identification with our fallen human condition.

He shares our poverty, laid in the straw of a manger, so that we can share the glory of his heaven. This is the self-emptying, kenotic God, who lies in the arms of Mary and needs her tender touch and warm milk, even though by his single breath all things came into being. As John Donne so beautifully put it in one of his Holy Sonnets, speaking of Mary

Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea, thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother.
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt’st in little room
Immensity, cloistered in thy dear womb.

This is why we travel, Bethlehem bound for this purpose, to kneel and adore the God who is one with us.

Incarnate God,
as you share our humanity
may we share your divinity;
as you share our poverty
may we share your riches;
as you emptied yourself
so fill us with your grace,
now and for all eternity.
Amen.

This is the second of the talks I gave at the recent ‘Bethlehem Bound Quiet Day’ at Southwark Cathedral. I hope that you enjoy it.

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Lord of the journey,
with Mary and Joseph,
with shepherds and Wise Men,
we are Bethlehem Bound.
Bring us with them
to worship before Jesus
baby, brother, Lord and Saviour
and so make every journey
a walk with you.
Amen.

One of the most amazing places in the world, in my opinion, must be the Plaza del Obradoiro in front of the west end of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. The twin towers loom over you, the flights of steps up to the main doors weave in front of you and the exotic nature of the design, unlike anything else in the world, Santiago Baroque as it is called, with a slight green tinge on the stone from the moss that grows on it – well it does rain a great deal – is stunning. There is a lot of space in which you can just sit and wait – and it’s worth finding somewhere to perch and just spend a bit of time. Why? Well, on the north side of the cathedral is a tunnel which leads people from the main street in the town along the side of the cathedral and to this west end. It’s a busy tunnel and the reason is that this is where the Camino ends, this is where ‘The Way’ ends, this is where so many journeys end.

You sit there and watch the walkers and the riders arriving. They are all carrying a rucksack and most of them have a shell or two dangling from it. They will have a stick of some kind in one hand, water bottles dangling from their backpack, shoes that have the dust clinging to them testifying to many miles walked – or a bike that shows the wear and tear of a long off-road ride.

But what is so incredible is seeing these people, these new arrivals, fall to their knees, in joy, in exhaustion, in a state of heightened and sheer emotion, tears flowing, laughter breaking out, cheers from friends who are there to welcome them. It is the most wonderful arrivals hall in the world.

But the journey doesn’t end quite there. They must summon up the strength to climb the steps, enter the cathedral and walk to the east end where the bones of St James are enshrined and embrace the one they have walked to see.

It’s a similar if less spiritual experience in the arrivals hall of an airport. The cab drivers are all there, the drivers of the limos collecting someone important, names written on a scrap of paper, or, as I now often see, on an iPad, being held up as the automatic doors leading from customs disgorge the newly arrived travellers into this place of arrival and embrace.

Amongst the drivers are the families, the friends, the lovers, the parents, the colleagues, all craning to get a first glimpse of the person they are there to greet. And then they emerge pushing the luggage trolley, dragging their case behind them and the screams of delight are heard, and people run forward and embrace and laugh and kiss and cry. ‘She’s arrived’ is written on a text and sent to the person waiting at home, ‘and she looks wonderful. Get the kettle on.’

The point of the journey is the destination, the place that you were always aiming for. It might have been the hotel in Torquay that Mum and Dad had booked for us – choosing from a brochure that you used to get from the local tourist board in the place that you wanted to stay – long before Teletext and the internet, when it was done by exchanges of letter – Bed & Breakfast, half board, full board, shared facilities, cruet provided. Dad pulled up outside ‘The Dorchester Guest House’ Torquay, whatever it was grandly called, to find something resembling Fawlty Towers. ‘I don’t think much of the nets’ says Mum. ‘Let’s see what the rooms are like’ says Dad. We just want to get out of the car; as far we kids were concerned we had arrived and were desperate to embrace the sea.

Abram arrives in the land to which God had directed him.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northwards and southwards and eastwards and westwards; for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring for ever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.’ So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord. (Genesis 13.14-18)

He had arrived and as he pitched his tent by the oaks little did he know that that would be the place of encounter with the reality of God, the place of hospitality.

People were arriving in Bethlehem from all over the country. They had crisscrossed the paths of many others, some heading back home in the north, others to the coastal plains, some down to the rich, sweet lands around Jericho in the Jordan Valley. The nation had been on the move. But some had come to the city of David, this little town of Bethlehem set in the hills, the place of barley growth, the place where sheep safely grazed, the place where bread was baked – after all that is what the name of the town actually meant ‘House of Bread’ and the smell of the baking barley loaves was like a warm embrace. ‘I remember that smell when I used to live here’ one would say to the other.

I quoted part of T S Eliot’s poem ‘Little Gidding’ to you earlier and I want to return to that poem.

If you came this way,
Taking the route you would be likely to take
From the place you would be likely to come from,
If you came this way in may time, you would find the hedges
White again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness.
It would be the same at the end of the journey,
If you came at night like a broken king,
If you came by day not knowing what you came for,
It would be the same, when you leave the rough road
And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade
And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment. There are other places
Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city–
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.

The line that speaks to me as I think about this whole notion of arriving is this

what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all.

Eliot picks up a similar theme at the end of the poem that will be read at many carol services and concerts over Christmas, ‘The Journey of the Magi’. Eliot was inspired in writing this poem by a sermon that Bishop Lancelot Andrewes preached to King James and the court at Whitehall on Christmas Day in 1622. ‘A cold coming we had of it’ was a line that the saintly bishop, now buried just behind us, wrote. But towards the end of the poem Eliot’s magi say this

were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;

What had they travelled for, what did arrival mean for them? For Harold Fry, on his unlikely pilgrimage, his arrival with Queenie is when she is at the point of death, unable to speak, yet the journey and the arrival turned out to be much more about his relationship with his wife Maureen. They were the ones truly reconciled by the journey. He, she, neither of them, had expected this. He thought his arrival would be about a tearful farewell with an old flame, but instead it was an encounter with his own life and a renewal of the love that he had for his wife.

were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?

For most people arriving in Bethlehem there was a straightforward task to be done, be counted by the Romans, tick that box and enjoy some time back amongst the hills and the barley loaves and watch the stars that always shone so brightly after you made your way home from the inn, slightly worse for wear, after the old and the new wine had been consumed.

Frances Chesterton, the wife of G K, wrote a beautiful poem called ‘Here is the little door’. It was set to music by Herbert Howells and this is how it begins

Here is the little door,
lift up the latch, oh lift!
We need not wander more,
but enter with our gift;

I will return to that poem in our last session. But we are at the door. For amongst all the arrivals are Mary and Joseph and it is their Bethlehem Bound journey that we are most interested in. Luke doesn’t tell us much about the journey, we can only imagine it. And all we know of the arrival is this

‘there was no place for them in the inn.’ (Luke 2.7)

When they arrived there was no greeting party, no one holding a sign up so that they knew that they were expected, nothing on a booking app to assure them they had a room all ready. Instead, through the crowded streets they made their way, man, girl, donkey until they saw a door and perhaps a light, something gently glowing that drew them nearer, and an innkeeper who had no room, but a place where they could get out of the cold.

It was not what they were expecting, not what Joseph had hoped for his arrival, for his wife, so close to giving birth. But it was warm and it was welcoming and they had arrived.

what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

Fulfilling the census requirements was just the shell, the husk of the meaning of the journey. At the dead of night life would break forth and the true meaning of all that travelling would be revealed.

W B Yeats writes a beautiful poem, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ with its intriguing first line ‘That is no country for old men.’ But this is the second stanza.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

Arriving in Byzantium, modern day Istanbul, must have been like arriving in heaven. For Yeats it seems to represent a past glory that old men seek, and maybe old women too.

What are you hoping for when you arrive, where is it that you imagine you are travelling to? I say imagine because we may think we are travelling to one place when in reality we will arrive somewhere quite different and find ourselves surprised, or maybe disappointed – sailing the seas and arriving in the holy city – but for birth or death – to say goodbye or to welcome in a fresh life? What are you expecting as you fall on your knees at the end of the journey?

God, be at the beginning
and at the end of all our travels
and open our eyes
and our hearts to the meaning of the journey.
Amen.