in the middle of the fire

 

REFLECTION AT St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU 
and St Martin’s, Duntroon
FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

(December 18^th) 2022
 
 
 READINGS:
 
Differing readings in the two centres, so I am taking, loosely, as a text Daniel 3:25:

“But I see four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire, and they are not hurt, and the fourth has the appearance of a god” 

(or T. S. Eliot, “The Wasteland,” line 360, “Who is the third who walks always beside you?”

 

I could spend a lifetime meditating on Advent and Christmas readings. So many to choose from. Were we strictly observing Advent 4 today we would be dwelling on the obedience, at great self-risk, of Joseph as he learns that his fiancée Mary is carrying a child that is not his.

Never mind that this child is the implantation of God in Mary’s womb, let us give Joseph his humanness: this child is not his, and Mary is his fiancée. By choosing to remain in relationship with her he is protecting her life; by choosing to obey God he is risking his dignity, his pride, his mana, his all.

It is risk itself that I find myself dwelling on at this time of the year. So many risks in the Incarnation of Christ. I don’t, to be honest, know what “Son” means in the context of God, but I do know that God’s very selfhood, God’s very essence is being placed into the terribly vulnerable state that is human existence. And yes, we have been trained to read the story of the conception, gestation and birth of Jesus as a safe and secure plan that was always going to work out, and after Christmas the reading of the slaughter of the innocents will strengthen that impression.

But what of the “yes, but” moments? Mary, aided by her fiancé, permits the entire plan of God to nestle in her womb, to nestle, to be born in what in another context Harry Chapin coyly calls “the usual way.” She lives, thouigh Joseph doesn’t, to eventually see him brutally executed. For we cannot divorce the birth and death of Jesus, and the roller coaster that is Mary’s life is one of terrifying ferocity. It is small wonder she ponders things in her heart along the journey. Of course we know the Easter story, and thank God we do. But she didn’t.

Still:  never can we neglect the resurrection. Stripped of that, then all that Mary faces, like so many women of hers and every age, is a story of a broken heart. So we will glance forward to the resurrection. But she could not, back in Bethlehem.

Later, when the first Christians turned to their scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures, to make sense of all that had taken place in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, they turned amongst many scriptures to the story of Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. They turned to a fourth figure walking in the flames with those who Nebuchadnezzar was trying to execute. They saw in that story a metaphor to unlock the meaning of Christmas. God entering the risk of human existence, God with us, Emmanuel in the flames of human existence, the womb of human existence. The fourth always with us watching not from a distance, not far off, but actually one of us.

The song by Joan Osborne, “One of Us,” so big a hit in the 1990s, is frustratingly ambivalent: does it capture or entirely miss the story that dwells at the heart of Christian faith? If you know the song, I’ll leave the question with you. If you don’t, ignore it. But in the womb God becomes one of us. Eternally.

T. S. Eliot famously captured the image another way – allegedly reflecting on the legends surrounding Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions. The party of explorers constantly had a sense of an extra presence with them as they faced the very extremities of human vulnerability. “Who is the third who walks always beside you” the poet asks an unseen, unnamed companion. The poet is there, the companion is there, but a shadowy figure, too is there, a presence bringing what may be divine hope into every human existence. An extra, almost seen presence. Who is the third in the poet’s conversation? Who is the fourth in the furnace? Whose are the footprints in the sand? The metaphors, of various merit, capture the Incarnation. Diana Spencer used the image of a third party in a marriage in a rightly dark and menacing way, but the figure of the Book of Daniel and of “The Wasteland,” while dark, is not menacing.

From the moment of conception in the uterus of Mary, God is one of us. God in Christ – not a distant God staring from afar – but God within the very vulnerabilities and risks and successes and failure of being human, is one of us. God, passing through the birth canal. God in a manger. God at the mercy of humans. God breathing resurrection into every death. God in the furnace of life and death. God dependent on Mary saying “Yes,” on Joseph saying “Yes,” and, strangely, on each of us saying “Yes,” as we ask God to be, as Wesley puts it, “born in us today.” Today and every today of our lives.

“There is always another one walking beside you,” says Eliot. Amen, say the scriptures.