| | "And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.'" -Luke 2:8-12
"The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight."
-O Little Town of Bethlehem
"Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!" -The Wind in the Willows
I haven't blogged in ages, and I offer no apology for that. But I couldn't quite abstain from my annual Christmas post; honestly, writing about it is the only time I sit to think on it. And it should be thought on, this holy night, this silent night, this midnight clear, thought on till the last of the Christmas wine is gone and we are left senseless either by the drink or the paradox of it all. So let us take up all our hopes and fears, for if we enter into Bethlehem, if we are indeed to walk that path, such are the things we shall meet.
Because I do think the old carols say it best, those lilting relics of English poetry that we've pummeled into irrelevance by our most devastating weapon: cultural ubiquity. Every year we are cheerily reminded over supermarket speakers that "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight," and here in the late hours of Christmas I marvel that anything could ever be so apt.
It would be easy to gloss over the text, to say that it is simply condensed for the sake of meter, that the verb means something different for each noun, that hopes are met and fears are assuaged, and that's not a bad reading. But then I'm reminded of the shepherds, sore afraid, as the King James so rightly puts it, afraid till the body is weak, and I wonder.
Not that it's so unusual; lot of scoundrels that we are, we're always fearing angels, and why shouldn't we? Sometimes I think western art has it all wrong, inferring that if angels are good and graceful they are demure and blond; better the living creatures of Ezekiel, looking upon us with their four faces and that ever-turning wheel of eyes. Some days I think nothing is so strange to us as that sort of goodness.
I confess, I'd be terrified if I were one of those shepherds, probably caught unawares in one of their most venial moments, bearing at once the full weight of angelic glory. Let us dispense of our phobias and our momentary fears; sure, there are nights when I'm afraid of violence, afraid of Los Angeles' notorious criminal element. But I'll tell you what I'm always afraid of, every waking moment, and often enough in my slumber as well: I'm afraid of being shown up. I'm afraid of being not nearly as valuable and virtuous and valiant as I imagine myself to be. People talk about religion as a comfort, and it is. I think most everyone needs something to wonder at, an altar to feel small before, but then I think we have a place, and if we're not going to make headway towards it, we'd best be put in it. But its being good for us in the long run doesn't make it any less painful, and it doesn't make a host of angels with glory of God shining round about them any less terrifying.
Now, we modern Christians are always in a hurry to explain away the "fearing God" part of wisdom literature as a synonym for respect, and that's not entirely untrue. But often enough I think we'd be better off starting with genuine fear, a real terror of the holy, the kind the angels seem to evoke. The numinous is a strange thing throughout human history; our keen awareness of the ineffable Other brings us as much concern as relief. The haunted cave and the cathedral nave are not wholly unlike one another-- nor mythologies and ghost stories. And all in all I think the Holy Ghost does his fair share of haunting.
This I take to be Adam's lot; our greatest fear and our fullest comfort lie in the same thing: that for all we've done to be as gods, we are not, and so our most profound joy and our most profound terror lies in our trembling apprehension of those gods that yet linger on our minds. If there is more on heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy, then so be it, but we shall not take it blithely.
So when it comes down to it, and a babe is born underneath those silent stars, when that Everlasting Light comes to Bethlehem, it is no passing remark to claim the hopes and fears of countless generations as the child's birthright. And yet there it is: that lingering presence which so diminishes us as it comforts us, that presence which stirred ever behind the holy of holies came close, closer than that multitude of angels, for he came and he wore our flesh, breathed our air, so close even that we should take his body and blood into our own; how little we wonder that our meager bodies should survive the experience. Is there anything more greatly desired and yet more greatly feared?
And yet the angel comes and he says, "fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy," and then, then, "which shall be unto all people;" not just unto the pious and prepared, not just to the eager , but to all of us, who many Sundays would just as soon cocoon ourselves in our blankets as go forth and face our Lord. To you, who are sore afraid, and oh, friend, I am afraid, there come good tidings of great joy. The fears of all the years are brought to their utmost, and here we find them transformed; God With Us may still be our undoing, he may tear from us our props of power and prestige, but so he shall be our Savior. If those are the most terrifying tidings of comfort and joy imaginable, so be it; they shall also reach the deepest. For all our most potent hopes and fears are intertwined, and tonight, at last, they are met. |
| | Posted 12/26/2007 4:43 AM - 22 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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