Peter Espeut | Overcoming the world

The Jewish people – once a mighty nation which conquered their neighbours – were now themselves conquered by the Romans, who taxed them and subjugated them. They remembered their glory days under King David, a shepherd turned mighty warrior who never lost a campaign, and who made them secure and comfortable. That was just a memory.

But King David had been made a promise: “When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. ... Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7: 12-16).

And so the Jews were expecting a mighty warrior-king who would gather and shepherd his scattered people, cleanse and purify the holy temple in Jerusalem, overcome the enemies of Israel, and reign as the Lord of the nations. He would come in glory, raise an army, chase those crazy baldheads out of town, and establish a kingdom of peace and justice, where every tear will be wiped away. They were waiting ...

And then a baby is born in an obscure town – not in a palace, but in a stable. He wore borrowed clothes too big for him (swaddling), and his crib was a manger, a feeding trough for cattle. His first visitors were earthy shepherds, smelling of their sheep.

CHARISMATIC PREACHER

He grew up to be a charismatic preacher who attracted a motley crew of followers, including a few poor fishermen, a couple of zealots, and a tax collector. He challenged the civil and religious leaders of his day so profoundly that the powerful felt he was dangerous enough that he had to be stamped out; and he was brutally executed – nailed to a cross – by the Roman imperial power.

But imperial Rome could not stamp out the Church he left behind to continue his ministry. In fact, the successors of those fishermen as well as a tent-maker, a doctor and a lawyer or two converted a succeeding Roman Emperor (and his mother), and changed the face of the Roman Empire and the course of history. The new religion was dynamite!

This week, we here in Jamaica – and the rest of the world – two thousand years later – celebrate the birth of that baby boy in the stable. The Church he founded remains, but the once mighty Roman Empire is no more.

In one way, it was the work of madmen ... people willing to die for a story about the Son of God, born of a woman to become the Son of Man, who rose from the dead after his execution. And many did give up their lives! It was the African bishop Tertullian (ca. 155-220 AD) who said that “The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church”.

Christianity was – and is – counter-cultural. As materialist humanity pursues prosperity and pleasure and power, this Messiah asks his followers to daily take up their cross – a symbol of pain and torture – and follow him. (Sheer madness! How could that idea sell?) But he also promises peace and comfort and joy, and a life full of meaning and purpose.

We have created a culture of noise and relentless commerce, a “holiday” season that barely mentions the Christ and what he stood for. Our culture offers us endless ways to feed our appetites, really anaesthetics to numb our higher sensibilities, and more deeply bury our ineradicable yearnings. And then we wonder at our own emptiness.

Consumer capitalism leads us away from joy, and maybe nearer to either Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (published in 1932) or George Orwell’s brutish 1984 (published in 1949); comfort of a kind, maybe, but the result is a crippled soul, because pleasure is not joy, and power is not joy, and material abundance is not joy; absent is any higher purpose to life, and thus life is empty of hope and joy.

EXPERIENCE OF UNEXPECTED

Joy is numinous, a taste of the merriment of heaven. It’s an experience of unexpected, transforming beauty and unearned, transcendent meaning. And these, in turn, are the qualities that provide the only true and lasting comfort to the human heart. It was another African – Augustine of Hippo – introspecting who said “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”.

Beneath it all, running like a fresh spring, the “glad tidings of great joy” remain; the Christmas promise of real joy remains. Amidst all the noise we simply need to turn our hearts towards it.

The dominant secular philosophy of the day would wish to banish religion into a corner as a personal and private matter. But Christianity is much more than a private way of salvation and a guide to a pious life; it is a system of public morality and public order, a way of global liberation, and a total philosophy of life. It was this dynamite that changed the world many centuries ago. Christianity is not a soft pillow on which to lay your head, but something, sometimes immediately overwhelming, at other times a slow but relentless overturning of – let’s not soften the truth – everything: including corruption, crime and violence, poverty, illiteracy and environmental degradation.

There are those who still find comfort and joy in Him, and are inspired, beyond all human calculation, to stake their very lives on Him and the way of life he prescribes leading to his Kingdom.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16: 33).

Peter Espeut is a development scientist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com