It also depicted Prime Minister Christopher Luxon as Judas, in a somewhat bizarre take on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper painting.

The student magazine took to social media this week to explain its centre-spread artwork and to reinforce that it never intended to disrespect or insult any religion.

"Canta respects all religious identities and backgrounds," it wrote.

"Our intention for the centrefold was to bring to light how politicians are often held on a pedestal, much like religious figures often are," Canta managing editor Hariklia Nicola told The NZ Herald's Media Insider, reinforcing the comments that the magazine had posted on social media.

"In addition to this, we wanted to highlight the specific meaning behind the Last Supper imagery, to demonstrate that although politicians are often seen as separate entities fighting different fights - and sometimes against each other - that at the end of the day, they are united in their purpose to better the lives of people in New Zealand however they may see fit."

That doesn't quite explain why Swarbrick was selected as Jesus, while Luxon is Judas, the traitor. Continue reading

Why such a lowly place?

Our views about status miss the message, and we must wrap this birth in splendour - angel song, an unusual star, three kings coming to bow before the child.

The wrapping continues until Jesus is lost under layers of Christmas trees, gifts and bearded Santas.

So this Christmas, let us let go of all the decoration and spend some time in wonder at the ordinariness of the Word of God made flesh.

Jesus knew who he was but never used that knowledge for self-aggrandisement. He identified with all things ordinary.

Like us, Jesus enjoyed good food and the company of friends.

I think that if he had written a gospel, it could be called "The Gospel of Table" so often are meals mentioned.

We know very little about Jesus' childhood. When he was 12, the age of maturity for a Jewish by, he left his patents to talk to some learned men.

The trouble was, he didn't tell Joseph and Mary, and they were distraught, looking for their lost son.

Does that echo with some teenage incident in our lives?

Let's look at other aspects of Jesus' humanity,

Jesus got angry with stupid and selfish people.

Jesus wept when he learned that his friend Lazarus had died.

Jesus got tired. One time he was so exhausted he slept in the bottom of the boat during a storm.

Jesus experienced loneliness. He said, "The Son of Man has no place to lay his head." I don't think he was talking about a pillow.

Through the Gospels we see growth in Jesus' experience. He had told his disciples not to go into Samaria or the Pagan territories because his mission was to the lost tribes of Israel.

Later, he talked with women in both those areas, leading him to preach to the people.

I feel that Jesus achieved full maturity during his ‘agony in the garden.' There, he accepted what was planned for him and did not try to defend himself

I grew up with the frequent reminder that Jesus died for my sins. I accepted that but also had the question, "Then why was he resurrected?' There had to be something more important than me swearing at my sister.

Jesus gives us the answer as part of the experience. What is resurrected is always greater than what has died.

So this year, I will leave the tinsel and Christmas cake to be with the Word of God-made Flesh. I want to journey through his humanity and humility, from his humble birth to his presence here and now.

Do you feel a part of that?

Look closely. You may recognise his presence in you.

• Joy Cowley is a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, writer and retreat facilitator.

He gives instances in the Bible of Jesus highlighting hypocrisy by using imagery that wouldn't look out of place in a Warner Bros cartoon. Read more

Over the coming weeks in schools, churches, high streets, and venues across this country, the Christmas story that began with Mary and Joseph's journey for a census will be enjoyed and celebrated by millions of people.

But of what story are we a part?

What story do we want to tell about ourselves?

The UK census gives us a particular and important snapshot of the identity of our nation, decade by decade.

Interpreting the story of trends, values, perceptions, and identities that underlies these snapshots is complicated, however.

Some commentators have responded to the census data about religious affiliation released last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) by predicting the terminal decline of Christianity in our nation or declaring this as a statistical watershed moment.

I am interested in the overall story that this census snapshot informs. Christians should approach this data with humility, attentiveness, and self-reflection.

Though the most common response to the voluntary question of religious affiliation remains "Christian," there was a 13.1 percentage decrease from 2011 to 2021.

The ONS clarifies that these figures are about "the religion with which [respondents] connect or identify, rather than their beliefs or active religious practice."

I do not find the trend in the responses to this particular question surprising: we have left behind the time when many people almost automatically identified as Christian.

Yet the story of the relationship between the identity expressed on our census forms and our engagement with faith is far from straightforward.

There are fewer people in the pews on a typical Sunday morning than a few decades ago, but at the same time, some of our churches - of all traditions and styles - are growing significantly, and we are also seeing people coming to faith in Jesus Christ, to whom the idea of joining a weekly service would not necessarily occur.

These apparently contrasting statistical snapshots inform a more complicated, though the incomplete story, which is not one of terminal decline for religious faith nor Christianity, but more about how individuals in our ever-changing nation and culture choose to express their identity.

This is a story on which other Christians and I must reflect carefully and humbly.

For Christians, however, the story that defines our identity has never been one of overwhelming numerical growth nor fear of extinction. Amid the complexities of identity, values and nation, Christians strive to live by the story of the Good News of Jesus Christ - a story notable for the absence of success by the world's usual standards.

A watershed moment in that story happened when "Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world." The events that then unfolded will be shared by millions of people in the UK this Christmas.

They will hear the baby Jesus described as a light that shines in the darkness. His story is not a tale of linear success but about how that light shines through the difficult realities of our lives and finally overcomes all darkness. Continue reading

The Gospel from which this claim originated apparently translates as: "He (Jesus) would take the boys to the seashore and, carrying the playing ball and the club, he would go over the waves of the sea as though he was playing on a frozen surface, hitting the playing ball." Read more

It said, "Jesus didn't dine with tax collectors and sinners because he wanted to appear inclusive, tolerant, and accepting.

"He ate with them to call them to a changed and fruitful life, to die to self and live for him.

"His call is transformation of life not affirmation of identity."

It would take some time to explain how bad this meme is, starting with its answering a claim no one ever makes.

Does anyone think that Jesus did what he did because he "wanted to appear inclusive," or to impress others?

Of course not.

But those sharing this quote are not really talking about Jesus. They are accusing people today of pretence and virtue-signalling, and of abusing Jesus' example as a way to excuse sinners and their sins.

Some in the Catholic world feel a need, even a compulsion, to make sure that judgment is always pronounced whenever mercy is offered.

By this thinking, sinners—or at least certain categories of sinners—must never be allowed to forget their offences.

How will they sin no more if they don't feel condemned?

Some in the Catholic world feel a need, even a compulsion, to make sure that judgment is always pronounced whenever mercy is offered.

The judgmentalism is bad, but I think the worst thing about the meme is that it effectively denies Jesus' humanity.

Real people like other people.

If Jesus became man, then he became a man who had friends. With the disciples most closely, as St. John Henry Newman explained, but with many others as well.

I came across the meme one evening in our townie dive bar, after spending a couple of hours sitting with my young friend who believes in crystals and three kinds of aliens (one that looks like birds), and my older friend, a retired cop.

I had also talked with the 30-something programming whiz who shares very intricate conspiracy theories, the man who admits to drinking a lot but prides himself on getting up the next morning and doing a good job at work, a huge young man who once asked if I could get him a girlfriend and then if he could sit on my lap (which baffled me until he called me "Santa") and several other people who use the F-word in a creative variety of ways.

All friends. Not close friends, but friends.

Some of these people live (I am sure, but I don't ask) in irregular sexual relationships, as Catholics understand it, and perhaps enjoy illegal substances as well as substantial amounts of alcohol.

Though many of the older patrons grew up Catholic, no one, as far as I can tell, ever goes into a church.

I like them all.

They're likeable people.

In fact, I like them better than most Catholics I know.

They are the same kind of people, I'm guessing, that Jesus ate with.

I think that Jesus ate at his equivalent of our dive bar because he liked the people.

Not just loved them, but liked them, enjoyed them for themselves, took pleasure in their company and felt happy just hanging out with them.

I think that Jesus ate at his equivalent of our dive bar because he liked the people.

Not just loved them, but liked them.

He wanted them to change, of course, the way he wants every one of us to change.

But I don't think the people I hang out with need to change any more than I do, or more than most of the good Catholics I know.

In some ways, among them kindness to others, they need to change less.

If I read them right, and I've been looking at this kind of thing for a long time, those who share the "Jesus didn't dine…" meme picture Jesus as purely divine.

They believe he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, but mainly as a guarantor that he shared our humanity in order to save us.

The Jesus they imagine is always on, always about being God, and being God means pronouncing judgment first and then forgiveness.

Always, if you will, making the sales pitch.

They don't imagine him doing normal human things for normal human reasons.

The Jesus they imagine is always on, always about being God, and being God means pronouncing judgment first and then forgiveness. Continue reading

These walls have been destroyed and rebuilt countless times. A journey to the old city of Jerusalem often involves a walk along the much-excavated walls.

In 16th century, during the reign of the Ottoman Empire in the region, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent decided to fully rebuild the city walls on the remains of the ancient walls.

The construction lasted from 1535-1538 and these are the walls that exist today.

The "eye of a needle" referred to by Jesus in the Gospel has been claimed, by some commentators, to be a gate in the wall of Jerusalem, which opened after the main gate was closed at night.

A camel could only pass through this smaller gate if it was stooped and had its baggage removed.

So a travelling merchant wishing to enter the city to trade the following day would have to leave his precious cargo outside the gate, or remove the cargo from the camel and carry it in himself!

This story has been put forth since at least the 15th century, and possibly as far back as the 9th century.

However, there is no reliable evidence for the existence of such a gate.

Whether there was or was not such a gate we may never know for sure, however, it does provide us with a worthwhile metaphor to sit and reflect with.

Am I carrying something that prevents me from entering through the gate?

• An unresolved hurt?
• An unreconciled relationship?
• Anger taking up space?
• A physical or mental illness yet to be integrated as a part of who I am?
• Blame for the unexpected and unwanted death of a family member or close friend?
• The wonderful experience is that healing is found at the gate!

Jesus says, "I am the gate. Anyone who enters through me will be safe: they will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture." (John 10:9)

• Gerard Whiteford is Marist priest; retreat facilitator and spiritual companion for 35 years. He writes regularly at www.restawhile.nz

It felt "weird," Carr said.

Until that moment, she'd always thought Jesus was white.

At least that's how he appeared when she was growing up. A copy of Warner E. Sallman's "Head of Christ" painting hung in her home, depicting a gentle Jesus with blue eyes turned heavenward and dark blond hair cascading over his shoulders in waves.

The painting, which has been reproduced a billion times, came to define what the central figure of Christianity looked like for generations of Christians in the United States — and beyond.

For years, Sallman's Jesus "represented the image of God," said Carr, director of ministry and administrative support staff at First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Maryland.

When she grew up and began to study the Bible on her own, she started to wonder about that painting and the message it sent.

"It didn't make sense that this picture was of this white guy," she said.

Carr isn't the first to question Sallman's image of Jesus and the impact it's had not only on theology but also on the wider culture. As protesters around the United States tear down statues of Confederate heroes and demand an accounting for the country's long legacy of racism, some in the church are asking if the time has come to cancel so-called white Jesus — including Sallman's famed painting.

Modest beginnings

The "Head of Christ" has been called the "best-known American artwork of the 20th century." The New York Times once labeled Sallman the "best-known artist" of the 20th century, despite the fact that few recognized his name.

"Sallman, who died in 1968, was a religious painter and illustrator whose most popular picture, ‘Head of Christ,' achieved a mass popularity that makes Warhol's soup can seem positively obscure," William Grimes of the Times wrote in 1994.

The famed image began as a charcoal sketch for the first issue of The Covenant Companion, a youth magazine for a denomination known as the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant.

Sallman, who grew up in the denomination, which is now known as the Evangelical Covenant Church, was a Chicago-based commercial artist. Wanting to appeal to young adults, he gave his Jesus a "very similar feeling to an image of a school or professional photo of the time making it more accessible and familiar to the audience," said Tai Lipan, gallery director at Indiana's Anderson University, which has housed the Warner Sallman Collection since the 1980s.

His approach worked.

The image was so popular that the 1940 graduating class of North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago commissioned Sallman to create a painting based on his drawing as their class gift to the school, according to the Evangelical Covenant Church's official magazine.

Sallman painted a copy for the school but sold the original "Head of Christ" to religious publisher Kriebel and Bates, and what Lipan calls a "Protestant icon" was born.

"This particular image of Jesus met the dawn of the ‘Mad Men,' of the marketing agency," said Matthew Anderson, affiliate professor of theological studies at Concordia University in Montreal.

The image quickly spread, printed on prayer cards and circulated by organizations, missionaries and a wide range of churches: Catholic and Protestant, evangelical and mainline, white and Black.

Copies accompanied soldiers into battle during World War II, handed out by the Salvation Army and YMCA through the USO. Millions of cards produced in a project called "Christ in Every Purse" that was endorsed by then-President Dwight Eisenhower and Trump family pastor Norman Vincent Peale were distributed all around the world.

The image appeared on pencils, bookmarks, lamps and clocks and was hung in courtrooms, police stations, libraries and schools. It became what scholar David Morgan has heard called a "photograph of Jesus."

Along the way, Sallman's image crowded out other depictions of Jesus.

Anderson said that it has been common for people to depict Jesus as a member of their culture or their ethnic group.

"If a person thinks that's the only possible representation of Jesus, then that's where the problem starts," he said.

Morgan, professor of religious studies at Duke University in North Carolina, agrees. Some of the earliest images of Jesus showed him "with very dark skin and possibly African," he said.

Sallman wasn't the first to depict Jesus as white, Morgan said. The Chicagoan had been inspired by a long tradition of European artists, most notably Frenchman Leon-Augustin Lhermitte.

But against the backdrop of U.S. history, of European Christians colonizing Indigenous lands with the blessing of the Doctrine of Discovery and enslaving African people, Morgan said, a universal image of a white Jesus became problematic.

"You simply can't ignore very Nordic Jesus," he said.

Cancel white Jesus

The backlash to Sallman's work began during the civil rights movement, when his depiction of a Scandinavian savior was criticized for enshrining the image of a white Jesus for generations of Americans.

That criticism has been renewed recently amid the current national reckoning over racism sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in an encounter with police.

Earlier this week, activist Shaun King called for statues depicting Jesus as European to come down alongside Confederate monuments, calling the depiction a "form of white supremacy."

Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor echoed that sentiment on Twitter.

"Yes, ‘blond blue-eyed jesus' IS a form of white supremacy," she tweeted.

Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, has also warned of the damaging impact of depictions of white Jesus.

"Every time you see white Jesus, you see white supremacy," she said recently on the Religion News Service video series "Becoming Less Racist: Lighting the Path to Anti-Racism."

Sallman's Jesus was "the Jesus you saw in all the Black Baptist churches," Butler told RNS in a follow-up interview.

But Sallman's Jesus did not look like Black Christians, according to the scholar. Instead, she said, Jesus looked "like the people who were beating you up in the streets or setting dogs on you."

That Jesus sent a message, Butler said.

"If Jesus is white and God is white," she said, "then authority is white."

Edward J. Blum, who co-authored the 2014 book "The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America," said many Christians remain hesitant to give up the image of white Jesus. He believes the continued popularity of white depictions of Jesus are "an example of how far in some respects the United States has not moved."

"If white Jesus can't be put to death, how could it possibly be the case that systemic racism is done?" Blum said. "Because this is one that just seems obvious. This one seems easy to give up."

Jemar Tisby, whose 2019 book "The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism" appeared on The New York Times bestseller list this week, said that believing in a white Jesus "denigrates the image of God in Black people and other people of color."

Tisby said that depicting Jesus as only white has theological implications. It narrows Christians' understanding of Jesus, he said.

"To say that Jesus is Black — or, more broadly, to say that Jesus is not white — is to say that Jesus identifies with the oppressed and that the experience of marginalized people is not foreign to God, but that God is on the side of those who, in Matthew 25, Jesus refers to as ‘the least of these,'" he said.

Still, Tisby is hopeful, pointing to a number of diverse images of Jesus that offer alternatives to Sallman's.

A decade after Sallman painted his "Head of Christ," Korean artist Kim Ki-chang created a picture cycle of the life of Christ in traditional Korean clothing and settings, featuring figures from Korean folk religion.

"Maori Jesus" is artist Sofia Minson's depiction of the Messiah as tangata whenua with full-face moko.

More recently, Sofia Minson, a New Zealand artist with Ngati Porou Maori, English, Swedish and Irish heritage, reimagined Sallman's Jesus as an Indigenous Maori man with a traditional face tattoo.

And there are numerous popular depictions of Jesus as Black.

Vincent Barzoni's "His Voyage: Life of Jesus," depicts Jesus with dark skin and dreadlocks, his wrists bound, while Franciscan friar Robert Lentz's "Jesus Christ Liberator" depicts Jesus as a Black man in the style of a Greek icon.

Janet McKenzie's "Jesus of the People," modelled on a Black woman, was chosen as the winner of the National Catholic Reporter's 1999 competition to answer the question, "What would Jesus Christ look like in the year 2000?"

"I don't know that there's one depiction that is coming to the fore, and that, I think, is illustrative that people are resisting a monolithic vision of Jesus' embodied self and, and understanding that his very incarnation — the fact that God became a human being in itself — is a way of identifying with all peoples everywhere," Tisby said.

These days, Carr said, she tries to avoid locking Jesus into one image.

She's also more concerned about how Jesus is represented in the lives of Christians — rather than in a piece of art.

"It's not so much the picture and my question about who Jesus is," she said. "It's more really the picture of who I look across the aisle and see as representing a different Jesus."

• Emily McFarlan Miller - First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Since 1723, at the request of Pope Innocent XIII, the Scala Sancta (Holy Stairway) was covered by a wooden casing in order to avoid the wear of the stone.

But now, until June 9, the Solemnity of Pentecost, pilgrims are able to touch and climb the ancient marble as it used to be 2,000 years ago. Read more

Dr Rocio Figueroa Alvear is a Peruvian theologian currently lecturing in systematic theology at Good Shepherd College in Auckland and an external researcher at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at Otago University.

Professor David Tombs is the Professor of Theology and Public Issues, and Director, Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago.

In the recently published study, Recognizing Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse: Responses from Sodalicio Survivors in Peru, Figueroa and Tombs highlight the reactions of eight victims of sexual abuse within the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in Peru to the idea of Jesus as a victim.

Figueroa's and Tombs' research, part of which explored the Gospels, revealed Jesus did, in fact, endure some sort of sexual humiliation during his arrest, trial and ultimate crucifixion.

Figueroa stressed that there is a difference between sexual humiliation and sexual assault.

While both are considered abuse, "there are different forms of abuse" including both sexual humiliation, which includes forced nudity, mockery, stripping or touching, and sexual assault, when the physical act takes place.

Figueroa, a sexual abuse survivor herself, has reached the conclusion that the concept that Jesus himself was a victim of sexual abuse was something survivors who participated in her study said could be helpful for the Church.

Referring to the small number of victims included in the study, Figueroa said it was "not a quantitative study, but a qualitative one".

"We didn't want to make general conclusions," she said. "We wanted to go in-depth into the answers of the survivors."

Source

• cruxnow.com
• faithwire.com
• Image: ourarchive.otago.ac.nz

John, the wild prophet in the wilderness had always known Jesus. Their mothers were related and close.

But John may have wondered who Jesus really was.

The prophet had a black and white faith that was about as austere as his diet of locusts and bush honey.

He preached repentance, baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and he was quick to denounce evil, even when it was in high places.

His judgement of Herod's marriage landed him in prison where he would eventually lose his head.

While he was in prison he must have had doubt about Jesus.

Like most people, he believed that the Roman occupation was punishment for the sins of Israel. The Messiah would come to deliver them.

And yes, John had believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

Yet what were the messages that were coming to him while he was in prison?

Jesus was preaching love. He was healing people whether they deserved it or not. He was eating with sinners.

There were rumours that he made friends with Romans, tax collectors and prostitutes.

This must have bewildered John, because he sent a message back for Jesus.

"Ask him if he is the one to come, or do we wait for another?"

So why did this reading create for me, a kind of seismic shift in morning prayer?

Because I saw John and Jesus in the church.

In 1982, I came into the "Jesus" church that preached a God of unconditional love, social justice, care of the poor, love of God and love of neighbour.

His was a presence that was almost palpable. I felt that I had come home.

However, not all people agreed that Vatican II was a good thing. Some were reacting as though the head had been cut off the "John" church.

They mourned that the black and white rules had been replaced by all this feel-good stuff.

There were people who believed they had worked hard to ensure eternal life, and a God of unconditional love was not acceptable.

A woman tried to explain the security she felt in the pre-Vatican II church. "You felt safe," she said. "You knew exactly where you were."

I suggested that growth meant change, and even Jesus' teachings changed as he grew in his ministry.

I'm sure that simply reinforced her suspicions about me.

Now I go back to John and Jesus and see them as belonging together. They were, after all, related.

As John baptised Jesus, so did the old church baptize the new. The freedom of the "Jesus" church, grew out of the "John" structures.

Sometimes I think it interesting that John the Baptist was a "head" man, while Jesus was the sacred "heart."

There's probably another prayer reflection there. But it can wait for another day.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.
• Image: TVNZ

The discovery in the ancient Byzantine village of Shivta has thrilled archaeologists. Although the painting is fragmented, experts from Israel's University of Haifa were able to make out the facial outline.

The painting, which is believed to date from the sixth century A.D., depicts Jesus as a short-haired youth. Continue reading

The Messiah, some say, while others blaspheme, calling him Son of God.

You wouldn't think him worthy of any title, he looks so ordinary, a man in a simple tunic with a rope belt, an untidy beard.

Yet I have seen him heal a child with bones twisted from birth. What is the source of this power? Angelic or demomic?

Nothing in his appearance makes him different from the crowd around him. But this Jesus, is different in that he doesn't see crowds.

He doesn't even see groups.

People are individuals and it doesn't matter to him if they're clean or unclean, respectable or not.

Someone should point out that the man following him is that infamous tax collector Matthew.

I know teachers who walk in some places with eyes closed, lest they see a woman of ill repute.

Their faces bear marks of virtue from bumping into stone walls.

This Jesus, however, talks openly with such women.

One of the scribes took him to task. "Don't you know she has a bad reputation?"

Jesus looked at him. "Who gave her the bad reputation?"

Although he talks much about love, his tongue is quick to cut through pretence or anything he sees as false doctrine.

I watch from a distance as other teachers and leaders try to engage him in conversation.

Mostly, they feel obliged to correct his error by bringing him back to the laws of Moses.

Is he grateful for their attention? Not in the slightest.

As a result, he has created much ill feeling among high-ranking Pharisees and Sadducees.

If they agree on one thing, it's that Jesus is a trouble-maker.

Yes, I know they can be somewhat pompous, but why does this Nazarene argue with his own people when it's the Romans who are the enemy?

He keeps talking about a loving God. It's my opinion that he should be talking about an angry God who will send a plague on the Romans and he did to the Egyptians in Moses' time.

That's what this country needs.

What happens instead? Jesus heals the servant of a Roman centurion!

I stand apart from my Pharisee brothers, unable to form a fixed opinion about this Jesus. There is something in him that attracts me and makes me afraid.

Why fear?

Because I am a man of learning whose life is regulated by the Torah, and the words of this Jesus take me into unknown territory. Sometimes I think I am losing myself.

Then there are those healings. I see the tenderness in his eyes and hands as he gives new life to broken bodies and souls. That also disturbs me in a way that is beyond logic. I don't know how to explain what I feel.

I must speak with him. Not when the crowds are around him. Not while my brothers are watching. Perhaps I will see him after sunset.

Good evening, Rabbi. My name is Nicodemus.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

The pace in an already over-stimulated society quickens. Everyone is trying to get their jobs, their gigs, their projects, finished by Christmas.

Many people bemoan the approach of this festival, complain about its commercialization, wonder why it is still observed in a multicultural, multi-faith country like Australia.

But most people eventually succumb to it, obediently flocking to family hearths on Christmas day. A feast takes place; presents are exchanged.

Children, especially, are honoured with gifts.

Why? Why does Christmas alone retain such a hold on us, while the significance of other festivals in the Christian calendar, such as Easter, has waned so dramatically?

The reason may be that the significance of Christmas is indeed both primal and universal. A child is born.

A unique child, yes, but unique ultimately only in a mythic sense, the sense in which every child is uniquely at the centre of the existential drama.

Christmas remembers and celebrates the primal fact of birth: every human is a born being, and born moreover into a family.

So, once a year, we are pulled by the seemingly irresistible force of Christmas back to our point of origin: family.

Even putting aside the Christian trappings however, one might still object to such a yearly rite of origins on the grounds that it is unfair to those who have "no family." But nobody has no family.

Each of us has a biological mother and father who together tie us into a great tapestry of ancestors, all of whom would care for us if they could. Caring for the child is the innate pattern and purpose of family.

Family is moreover a gift economy: incalculable gifts of love and care are freely bestowed, on the understanding, only, that they will be passed on.

At Christmas we ritualize, with our Christmas presents, the endless chain of gift-giving that sustains the great trans-generational unfolding of family.

Whether the family hearth to which we return on Christmas day is actual or merely symbolic, by returning to it we acknowledge the fact that each of us belongs inalienably and equally to a vast familial story, a story that ramifies out into the wider story of humanity.

Christmas is about belonging, inalienable belonging, the belonging that is literally our birthright. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion & Ethics article by Freya Mathews, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University.
• Image: Crossroads Initiative

The only negative character in the story was the landlord of the inn. "He was mean!" a boy said.

Really? I wondered why the world's most beautiful story had to have a villain. Who was the innkeeper? Man or woman? St Luke doesn't tell us. Were Joseph and Mary actually turned away?

Inn is probably a respectable name for what would have been a largish one-roomed dwelling where travellers could spread some straw on the floor to sleep after a surfeit of wine.

This was census time, so the place would be crowded and noisy, people elbow to elbow on the floor and rooftop. It was no place for a young woman about to give birth.

What we understand to be a stable was probably a cave or mud-brick shelter for the innkeeper's animals, although there is no mention of animals in scripture. The ox and the ass were medieval additions.

It's the word "manger," an animal feeding place, that suggests there could have been a donkey, maybe a goat and a few sheep. If so, they would probably have been cleared out to make room for Mary and Joseph.

So, was the innkeeper mean or compassionate?

And why do we want to judge the Christmas story this way?

I'm still doing it. The advertising started in November and I complained about the commercial hijacking of Christmas. For me, the sprigs of holly and tinsel represented tension, greed and credit card debt.

Behind the beard, Santa Claus was bogus, the agent for profit on one hand, poverty and waste on the other.

I had become sour about what I called the secularisation of Christmas, although the word "secular" also felt false. I didn't see families coming together, holidays planned.

I didn't count the children who were looking at the horizon with shining eyes, or the number of Christmas cakes fragrant in ovens. It didn't occur to me that most of those presents were being chosen with love.

Then I heard that boy say the innkeeper was mean. Yep. That went home. It wasn't the innkeeper who was mean, it was me.

I was the grumpy one who had no room in the inn of my thinking. Floor and roof were covered with negative thoughts, and it was time for me to go to the stable.

So, Terry and I will celebrate Christmas as we've always done. I'll sing carols in church and we'll kneel before the infant who has claimed our lives.

Elsewhere, shops will be busy and smiling staff will be wearing Santa hats or plastic reindeer horns. In homes, children get sent to bed so that presents can be wrapped and put under the tree.

Some child will have left out a can of soft drink for Santa. Some dad will be wondering how he'll wrap his daughter's first two-wheeler.

And where is baby Jesus in all of this?

He is everywhere. Absolutely everywhere!

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

Later story tellers adorned them with further details that helped people imagine the scene and to appreciate the meaning of the stories.

Luke's Gospel tells us that Jesus was born in a manger. The cribs add animals. Matthew has Eastern wise men visit Jesus with presents.

Later stories give them crowns and make them kings, each with his own name and distinctive traits. Matthew also says simply that Joseph was told to get up and take Jesus to Egypt because Herod was seeking to kill him.

Later stories fill in their journey. Mary and Jesus ride on a donkey, led by a boy.

Idols fall from their pedestals as they pass, and at one resting place palm trees bend to provide Jesus with fruit and waters flowed from their roots.

This last story provided rich material for artists to paint the scene and add their own details.

The Bruges painter Gerard David depicts Mary in a dazzling blue dress, seated regally on a rock ledge feeding Jesus with a bunch of grapes, while the donkey with ears pricked up rests in the shade of trees and Joseph in the distance knocks fruit from a tree with a stick.

Behind them lie a village and fields rising to a wooded ridge. When Caravaggio paints the same scene a century later he has an angel sing to Jesus while Joseph holds the score.

These details don't tell us much about what life was like along the sea road to Egypt, but they do illuminate the deeper meaning of the Christmas stories.

They speak of the Son of God coming into our world to join us, so demonstrating how precious and what a great gift our world is. Continue reading

Sources

• Eureka Street article by Andrew Hamilton, consulting editor of Eureka Street.
• Image: EPPH

It was a great celebration. The angels were in fine voice, and Jesus consented to be a baby again. He lay in Mary's arms while Joseph sat to one side, smiling protectively.

One by one, the Saints advanced, bringing gifts to the young King of Kings.

St Francis came barefooted, carrying a little white dove which he placed at Mary's feet. The angels sighed with pleasure.

Then came St Therese of Lisieux with a bunch of roses. Oo-ooh! went the angels again.

Big Teresa of Avila walked across, carrying all her original manuscripts. The angels were very impressed. Aa-aah! they cried as St Teresa offered her writings.

And so it went on.

Finally, in came St Ignatius of Loyola. As he limped towards the Holy Family, the angels noticed his hands were empty. No gift!. This sent ripples of shock through the angels. They nudged each other. Typical Jesuit! they muttered.

Worse was to come. Ignatius ignored Mary and Jesus. He walked straight past them and stopped on the other side of Joseph. Then he leaned over and said in Joseph's ear, "Have you thought about his education?"

It's a good story, but the reversal lies in the fact it was Jesus who taught Ignatius of Loyola.

A nobleman and soldier, Ignatius was crippled by a cannon ball. With broken bones and ambitions, all he could do was lie in bed, read, think and dream. It was the life of Jesus in the gospels that spiritually mended and reshaped his life.

I can connect with this. I'm made aware of the ways God has sent cannon balls to disable my plans for myself. Some of you will know exactly what I mean.

It can be a literal blow - accident, illness, sudden loss or failure. Whatever, we are made helpless. Some part of ourselves has gone and even prayer seems empty. The phrase "feeling gutted" becomes reality.

Then the resurrection happens. Like Lazarus we stagger out of the tomb, dropping our bandages.

There is new life in us, something bigger than what has been taken away, and given time we may well think that the ‘cannon ball' was the best thing to happen to us.

As for Ignatius? Well, 30 years ago, Br Marty Williams SM showed me around Rome, and the most cherished memory was seeing the room and bed where St Ignatius died.

Both were bare, starkly beautiful in their poverty. I gazed at the little iron bed, knowing that the man who had lain on it, was very different from the man bed-ridden with a shattered leg.

The wounded soldier had been small; the man who had died in Rome was spiritually immense.

I still think about that. I imagine the younger Ignatius unable to walk, in pain and helpless, and Jesus whispering in his ear, "Have you thought about your education?"

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

It is the precisely that part of us, and not our ideas of "goodness" which is open to divine growth.

Carl Jung put it another way. Befriend your shadow. Embrace your darkness and watch it turn into the light.

Whatever images we use to describe the process, we come back to Jesus who preached the message until it made him so unpopular, that the "good" people killed him.

Those obsessed with their own virtue, he called "whitened sepulchres, tombs painted on the outside but corrupt within." These seem harsh words until we realise that his judgement was not about imperfection but the refusal to acknowledge it.

Of the woman who wept while anointing his feet, he said, "She loves much because she has been forgiven much." This woman had not tried to disown her story. She had embraced her shadow and it had turned into the light of divine love.

When I read Jesus' teachings I find it helpful to look beyond specific personalities to the principle involved. After all, the shadow and the light, the Pharisee and the loving giver, are in each of us.

It seems to me that Jesus spent more time talking about this, than anything else - the need for me to claim my whole story and bring the entire person to the God who made me.

When that understanding moves from my head to my heart, there is profound relief coupled with a deep sense of God as the Abundant Giver.

God does not judge me. God is Love and Love does not judge. It is I who judge myself when I encounter that Divine love.

If I don't claim the wholeness of my story, I will then project that judgement on other people. I may even project it on God.

When I claim my story, I usually find that what I tried to throw away as unworthy, actually contains the voice of God. This is apparent in the recurring patterns in life.

The lesson that is ignored or put aside, will come back again and again, each time stronger until I pay attention to it.

Whatever that particular lesson is, it will be about growth and it will involve moving away from the shadows of fear and into the light of love.

I believe that God does walk behind us, gathering bits of discarded story and giving them back to us. When we accept them as gift, we discover the truth of forgiveness.

The woman who anointed Jesus' feet with her tears, did not give Jesus her love because God had forgiven her. She gave him God's love because God had shown her how to forgive herself.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

There is a medieval Christian saying, "no devil, no Redeemer," he says.

"The modern world makes it hard to believe in the devil. But it treats Jesus Christ the same way. And that's the point." Read more