From the Minister
Words and The Word
As November gives way to Advent, I have often reached for Janet Morley’s wonderful apology Hazard by Starlight, subtitled A Poem a Day from Advent to Epiphany. The book does what it says on the cover, offering a poem for each day from the 1 December the 5 January. But it does a great deal more: as well as a wonderful selection of poems, from George Herbert and Christina Rossetti to Elizabeth Jennings and Rowan Williams, there are deeply insightful and moving reflection based on the lyrics to guide us through the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. The choices are varied in era and style, but always thoughtful and never sentimental – we are spare the saccharine verses that sometimes escape from the Christmas cards into wider circulation!
A poem not included in Hazard by Starlight is Robert Lowell’s The Holy Innocence. As a teenager study English Literature for ‘A’ level a long, long time ago, I was struck by the concluding line of Lowell’s poem, and Google help me to track down a half-remembered quotation and find the whole lyric. Reflecting on the world out-Heroding Herod her nineteen hundred and forty five years after the first Christmas, Lowell and his poem: –
‘Lamb of the Shepherd, Child, how still you lie.’
Is Lowell suggesting that the Chris Child is powerless in the face of human cruelty and injustice? Or – work - that religion is a falsehood, deceiving people longing for peace and hope and looking for a better world? What is the force of those words ‘still’ and ‘lie’? They disturbed me as a teenager reader (and Christian) all those years ago, and they disturb and challenge me today.
There are two miracles at the heart of the Christmas stories. The first is that God comes to be like us, to share our life, experience the real world from the inside. Not a world of cheer and goodwill, but a world of injustice, prejudice, fractured relationships, and political maneuvering. This is what Incarnation is all about – God becoming really and truly human in the person Jesus Christ
The second miracle is that God becomes like us, so that we can become like God – so that we can be forgiven, set free, made new, restored, and transformed. This is the hope we proclaim and celebrate at Christmas. And it’s the hope we seek to live out throughout the year.
Robert Lowell’s words continue to haunt and disturb, especially when the Church falls short of it’s calling to make real the presence of God in the world. I’m reminded, though, that God is not limited or confined to the Church, and that the message of the Christmas hymn remains truth: –
‘Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life of all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.’
May we all know hope and peace this Christmas,
Yours in Christ,
Martin Wellings.
Last Updated: 6 January 2025
