Grace. (December 24/January 25)

Dear Friends

I have only fairly recently discovered the poetry of Michael Symmons Roberts. His collection Drysalter was published in 2013. The title, like much of his poetry, delights in playing with language. The dictionary definition of ‘drysalter’ greets us at the start of the book; an ancient word for “a dealer in drugs, dye-stuffs, gums, oils, etc.” It makes me think of camel caravans crossing the Sahara for trade and the rich smells of a bazaar in medieval Timbuktu. But it has another powerful resonance; the book of Psalms in our Bibles somehow made dry, as if, perhaps, newly preserved. And it quickly becomes clear that the Bible is close as these poems flow. There are 150 of them, just as we have 150 psalms. And just as so many psalms are carefully constructed, obeying rules in the original Hebrew that we often miss in the translations, every poem of the 150 uses just 15 lines in different combinations.

October ripens under leaf-mould
ancient limewashed walls grow warm
in late, slant sun. A deer halts in a field alone.
There are worlds out here to long for.
And we are not lost yet.

Grace becomes something elusive but never impossible. It is what we long for and it is the assurance that we are not lost yet. In other words, God has not given up on anything or anyone. These are realities at the heart of Christmas.

As 2024 tumbles towards 2025 we are, maybe, all too aware of the dangerous challenges besetting the world. The new year will see a new President inaugurated in Washington; a leader many, me included, prayed never to see return to power. Wars rage on with untold suffering. So many lives lost, so much destroyed, an endless expanse of ruins. Climate science tells us what the floodwaters, storms and record heatwaves already signal; we are fast using up Earth’s capacity to cope with humanity’s greed and selfishness. Division seems to be a hallmark of so much of our living now; rich getting richer as poor get poorer, cruel and angry words shouted across the internet, communities uneasy within themselves, families pressured and daunted, services we rely upon pushed to their limits. Despair would not seem unreasonable!

There are worlds out here to long for.
And we are not lost yet.

Christmas is so much more than the neat cast around the crib. The ancient carols may be familiar, but their depth of truth remains inexhaustible. In the darkness of this season, a light burns oh so very brightly! God chooses to enter completely, utterly, disarmingly and dangerously into the midst of every cranny of creation. The baby sucking in his very first breath, tangy with the smell of the dung of a donkey, is the God who defies distance and gives up glory to come beside us. This baby who is always God-with-us refuses to flee from the fears and threats which loiter. Instead, with the utmost tenderness and a power that can ignite the cosmos, the baby is born to reveal to us the most amazing grace.

In every life, in each of us, there are worlds out here to long for. Not one of us, not creation itself, is lost yet. God is in the salvation business, the setting free business, the reclaiming and renewing business. With God it is always forgiveness that flows even as we are fully known and truly judged. Our guilt and shame are overthrown, revealed to be imposters pretending to judge us. The prisons we inhabit, and those that others lock us in by their actions and attitudes, fly open as God reaches for us, takes us and holds us to a heart divine and welcoming.

This is what grace is; God’s never ever giving up on us. This is why Christmas matters so very much. For the baby we welcome is the one in whom this grace takes flesh and blood, moves close, breathes in rhythm with us, dances as we step out and weeps as we fall into sorrow.

No. Nothing is lost yet! And the worlds we long for, for ourselves and for all creation, are not ghosts or fantasies. They are the stuff that God works with, right now.

May this God of grace bless you and yours this Christmas, and bring you into a new year with love, hope and joy.

Yours in Christ,

Neil