Third Monday of Advent – Christmas barbed and Barbarous by Dave Perry

This afternoon’s post comes from Rev Dr David Perry a Methodist Minister who has been the Chair of the Lincoln and Grimsby District since 2000. Dave comes from the Black Country in the West Midlands. After a first degree in Biological Sciences & Geography he became a research palaeoecologist (researching climatic and environmental changes over the last 20,000 years in Britain and Iceland) at Birmingham University. He had his first taste of Christianity and Methodism whilst an undergraduate and became a member of the Methodist Church at Selly Oak.  His hobbies include fell walking, rambling, running, reading, art, photography, model railways, red wine and watching movies on DVD. Dave is married to Sue, who is Deputy Head of Dietetics for the Hull and E. Yorkshire NHS Hospitals Trust. They have two daughters, Bekki (online merchandising designer) and Judy (final year Communication and Media student).  Dave Blogs at Visualtheology

Christmas barbed and barbarous

“they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us”   Matthew 1:23

When juxtaposed with an image of barbed wire the definition of the word barbarous is revealing. The vicious purpose of these short spikes of metal is to rip and tear flesh. Such wire is designed to keep out those individuals and groups deemed undesirable or dangerous.

Those who are not like us. Particularly those who are foreign, strange, savage even. All across the globe wire like this separates and defines humanity. It attempts to keep what we know safe and exclude what we fear.

The gospels take wire cutters to such barbed and barbarous thinking. Seen from the wrong side of the wire Christmas is a divine protest movement which breaks into the easy enclaves and comfortable compounds of thought and behaviour which deny others the right to fulness of life. And in Jesus God leads the way, ripping up fences of hatred and distrust and moving right through to the vulnerabilities of the human heart, where love births togetherness and respect.

Christmas is truly shocking. And if the church domesticates the gospel and keeps it safe behind the barbed wire of cautious theology and timid mission, we will eventually discover just how foreign, strange and startling God is, when God cuts through and reaches us in all the raw, savage beauty of love in Jesus.

The loving reality of God with us is barbed and barbarous to undemanding faith and harsh politics alike. The shocking truth revealed by St Matthew tears down barriers and reveals God becoming real in the acute mess and muddle of life gone wrong. In Bethlehem hope for a world without wire is born.

And with bloodied hands and torn flesh Jesus will show us the true cost of such amazing love.