next to the toffee tree

so i was sitting there in a church, staring at a small cup of juice, noticing that this church used glass communion cups instead the regular plastic disposables. i liked those plastic ones, there was a certain humility to them. i was siting there, and all the pastor was talking about was peace. peace this, peace that, our symbol of peace, and he was right. but as i pondered i couldn’t help but form the image of a dying man in my mind. a hardened, sharpened, heavy chunk of metal forcing its way under his ribs, a voice saying ‘this is my blood’.

i wonder what john thought at that moment watching his rabbi pinned to an olive tree, his blood streaking down its trunk and spreading over its roots. i wonder if he remembered his voice saying ’this is my blood’. if he did, i wonder if he questioned what he had really been involved in the previous night. i wonder how tightly fear pressed all around his heart. a violent death, no doubters will contest, but as i sat there, i could feel that peace the pastor spoke of.

a certain serenity deep within. a deep hope.

back to the scene at the foot of the cross we feel the roman empire rising ominously overhead. wasn’t this the great prophet? signs never seen before preformed by his healing hands? another hope of israel vanishes among the sands of time. maybe God has finally abandoned us. you can sense this attiditude in the chaotic remains of the disciples, so what can you expect from the masses? when Christ had told them that they must eat of His flesh the crowds got lost, only the disciples remained, and if this core group was faltering now, then what can we expect of israel and her sons and daughters. but Christ never meant to fill the hearts of the jews with war and hate, a new covenant was coming when the jews would not be freed from rome, a dark oppressive giant rising over the horizon, but from their own dark and oppressive hearts.

this blood would pave the way for not only for israel’s freedom, but my freedom, and the world’s salvation.

that’s a deep hope. that the world can be changed for the better. i think too much of my life i spend looking at the world as this wall, wide and tall, deep and strong and dark. i push and i push trying to knock it over, only to find i’m farther back when i started. do i throw my hands up? scream when i’m in empty places? curse? i try not to. i try to see the beauty in life, for even in a dark time, when God had not spoken to his people in 400 years there came a beauty so profound and powerful it acts on the heart of every man and woman. a rabbi pinned to a tree releasing a electricity in the air never to be made silent. God laying his life down, a power that can never be vanquished, a peace that can never be stolen. and that is why i see a violent serenity in that little plastic cup.

its a good thing i’m don’t get graded on my blogs because i’m just now getting back to the thesis.

silent night, loved by most, scoffed at by higher theologians who remind us that it was the birth of a baby — hardly a silent one of those in all of history. but i like the song, undoubtedly its what rings in my head as i lay it down on christmas eve. you see, there was a violent serenity about that night too. a baby crying, a mother writhing in pain, some shepards getting the junk scared out of them by shining alien creatures. i imagine fugitives, they have been hiding out from the cia and fbi for years. they twaddle around a grassy slope somewhere in southern argentina when – bam! blinding white spotlights burst out of the cloud cover. helicopters with a chaotic flurry of propeller blades descend on the confused and frightened band of men. the ring of a mega phone and in a stately authoritative voice “do not be afraid!” i mean i think we should get a little more of a giggle out of this when we read it in the bible. maybe we’ve watched to many christmas pageants, where the angels are played by petite blond haired girls with shy smiles. the real specimens were unearthly beings arrayed in light. whatever the spectacle was, i offer it was not serene.

what was serene was their message. the prince of peace has been born. freedom for captive israel has be lowered to the earth from above. the earth that groaned for the touch of God may, for a night, sleep in heavenly peace. i like candle lighting services, and i like silent night.  

a woman writhes in a stable; through a voilent labour a Savior is brought to a dirty manger, and through a violent labour 33 years later that child, now man, would complete his mission to bring peace.

we live in a violent world (if you don’t believe me you need to get out more) and we all live with a dark nature brooding within (a question every human must face on their own). i live a violent life, i struggle outwardly and within, but as the preacher preaches of the peace in a plastic cup, i’ll drink it down. thinking of a blood stained olive tree, its warmed bark resting in the stillness following an earthquake. and i will think of a woman and a man bringing a child into a barn without an epidural. pondering how these two, violence and serenity, must co-exist, light feet dancing on the face of human history, a sort of predestined waltz. waltzing toward a time when no pain would be found between them any longer, only a wondrous light – the silent night only a shadow of this coming mystery.