Words on the Word
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:7-10: How beautiful are the feet.
Hebrews 1:1-6: He is the radiant light of God’s glory.
John 1:1-18: From his fullness we have received.
Today’s readings let us contemplate the Lord’s birth from various angles. Their span is wondrously broad. It lets us recognise, within a single liturgical celebration, a fascinating aspect of the Biblical text. The Bible is at the same time resolutely concrete and thoroughly sublime. It provides daring symbols and abstractions by which we may perceive eternal reality. Meanwhile it bids us stand with our feet on the ground.
The Mass of Christmas Day begins, precisely, with a paean to feet. ‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness.’ I first took conscious note of this passage as a boy, listening to Handel’s Messiah. You all know the aria that sets this verse. I thought it beautiful, and very peculiar. Here one was, listening to one of the world’s greatest oratorios celebrating history’s greatest mystery. Then all this singing about feet?
After a while I saw the beauty manifest here; I discovered how deep, how amiable Scripture is.
These particular feet turn up towards the end of Isaiah’s prophecy, as broad and deep as the ocean. Isaiah has led us through Israel’s trials and hopes step by step. He has educated us in what God expects of his people. Thereby we acquire fundamental insight: God’s promises are credible, yes; his mercy is sure, his grace all-encompassing. But that doesn’t mean man can swan about whistling, pursuing his desires and ambitions, running roughshod over others while he thinks, ‘Oh well, the Ancient of Days can sort out the mess.’
God’s grace is like dew at dawn. It is given to moisten dried-out land, to make it bring forth substantial, and supersubstantial, nourishment. The earth must absorb this gracious moisture and be transformed by it. God’s purpose is growth, fruitfulness, thriving. He doesn’t just hang around and watch when a creature resists purposeful care. When he finds fruitless trees, he cuts them down and throws them on the fire. This is made explicit in the Gospel.
Isaiah tells us how Israel is submitted to such purification. The people’s pride, which had reduced salvation history just to a self-affirming saga, is systematically broken down by the Lord himself. Jerusalem, the city of God, is ruined. The image Jeremiah, another prophet, employs at just about the same time – of the potter who takes a failed vessel from the wheel, beats the clay into a lump, then starts again – is realised historically. Jerusalem is no more than rubble, the city on the hill reduced to a quarry.
But then it comes afresh, the wondrous assurance of God’s faithfulness. Isaiah draws the picture of watchmen walking on Jerusalem’s walls despondent. What is there to defend in a city razed to the ground? They take it for granted that God has abandoned them; that whatever was comforting, of value, belongs to the past; that the future is dark. They march up and down the walls from habit, as if to be confirmed in their bitterness. By looking around, they ascertain that existence is prospectless. It seems, then, incredible when they see, far away, people walking with the spring in their step that speaks of firm purpose. Indeed, not only do they walk; they run, carrying peace, good news. Their message is: ‘Your God is king!’
Only when that principle is in place can human society develop harmoniously. Those without hope take heart when they see, be it at a distance, people who walk with hope, towards hope. The mere fact of seeing them walk hopefully is for a blessing. Thence the exclamation in praise of feet. It is pregnant with this intention: Oh, if only I, too, could walk like that, trustfully and purposefully! This image speaks powerfully to us today, as we enter upon the Church’s Jubilee Year with the motto, ‘Pilgrims towards hope.’ We are to re-learn to walk this year; learning to walk in such a way that our very gait will spur others on to hope.
Isaiah’s palpable, foot-focused vision is complemented by the Prologue of John, Scripture’s most philosophical passage. We are elevated from earth to heaven. We consider our life in the light of eternity. The Word who became flesh is the Word by whom all things were made, who sustains creation. His incarnation in Mary’s womb fulfils the purpose God had for man in the beginning. The promise of God’s philanthropy resonates from everlasting to everlasting. Deep calls upon deep. If we learn to listen, we shall hear the same Word resonate from the beginning to the end of time, and in the midst of the times that are ours.
For the Word entered history, not as a passing guest, but to be a reliable, lasting presence. His presence will endure until history itself comes to an end. The Word is no longer remote; it is wonderfully near – in Christ’s commandments, in his teaching and example, but also bodily. The Word’s hands, which healed lepers and blessed infants, touch us now; the Word’s feet, which carried him through the land of promise, which the Magdalene anointed, are in movement still. ‘My Father is still at work’, he says: ‘I also work.’ He will not rest until his work is done.
Let us then go out to meet him confidently, rejoicing and giving thanks. Let us open our lives wide for his coming. Note this: exactly the same formula that today’s collect uses to describe the grace brought by Christ’s incarnation – ‘grant that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity’ – is exactly the same that the priest prays over water and wine at each Eucharist. The Lord is near. The Lord is here. He calls us to union with him, so that we can go out far and wide carrying the message: ‘God is King!’ Thus the world is renewed.
Happy Christmas! May your feet be beautiful. Amen.
Detail from Duccio di Buoninsegna’s Maestà altarpiece.