Let’s hear it for the holy foreskin

I’m sure there’s something quite bizarre about the title of this post. But it wasn’t so to mediaeval ears, when the Holy Prepuce was a sought after relic apparently held simultaneously by more than one church.

I am pondering tomorrow’s sermon (in case you were wondering!). I see the lectionary gives me the option to keep the circumcision of Jesus hidden away from the majority of worshippers by transferring it to Monday and sticking with the safe theme of Christmas. Anglican worship of the last century, of course, encouraged a focus on the naming of Jesus, and made the ritual a barely mentioned accidental accessory to the thing that really mattered.

(In the process it continued and emphasised the popular misreading of Philippians 2:6-11 as making “Jesus” the name above all names, rather than sharing with him God’s own name, kyrios, ha-Shem, YHWH.)

The Roman Catholic Church has removed it entirely from the calendar and replaced it with the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God, as – it would seem – have some Anglicans. Much as I honour the Mother of God, this seems to me to be celebrating the theological cart while ignoring the historical horse: replacing the mess of incarnational specifics with the glory of thematic theotokia.

It seems that for all the emphasis on Jesus the Jew, there’s a limit to how much we’ll reflect on his Jewishness, and the sacred snip of the holy foreskin is just that bit too Jewish for a nice well brought-up church’s table manners. It is, however, perhaps rather an important plank in understanding Jesus as Torah observant, even if he engages in disputes about exactly what Torah observance entails.

(In fact, it might be a rather important political theology for interfaith relationships in the light of the rationalist attempt to ban circumcision which some Jewish people in the West see – along with kashrut and ritual slaughter – as a looming problem for them as for Islam.)

The earliest Christian text I know of to make anything more of the Circumcision than a bare historic fact is the Arabic Infancy Gospel.

And the time of circumcision, that is, the eighth day, being at hand, the child was to be circumcised according to the law. Wherefore they circumcised Him in the cave. And the old Hebrew woman took the piece of skin; but some say that she took the navel-string, and laid it past in a jar of old oil of nard. And she had a son, a dealer in ointments, and she gave it to him, saying: See that you do not sell this jar of ointment of nard, even although three hundred denarii should be offered you for it. And this is that jar which Mary the sinner bought and poured upon the head and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, which thereafter she wiped with the hair of her head.

The writer of this anonymous apocryphon makes a fascinating narrative connection between the shedding of the infant’s blood and the shedding of the adult’s. (Those who suspect the possibility that circumcision may in some respects function as a substitute for child-acrifice will find this even more interesting.) The oil that anoints him for burial (I am assuming the author will have conflated all the accounts of the anointing of Jesus.) is the oil that has marinaded his foreskin for thirty years. The vulnerability of infant flesh to the mohel’s knife is the same vulnerability of adult flesh to the nails and the spear. In the circumcision of the child, the death of the adult is foretold. This child is born to shed his life-blood from beginning to end, and even here at the cradle, the grave casts its shadow.

The Higgs logos: putting the mass back into Christmas.

I’ve been pondering the Higgs boson. And the result of my pondering is a definite lack of understanding. But I’m in good company. Here’s geneticist Professor Steve Jones:

I don’t understand any of it,” he says, cheerfully. “What the public doesn’t know is that most scientists don’t understand other scientists.”

It’s all a bit like those people who introduce the Christmas gospel (i.e. John 1:1-14) as: “St John explains the mystery of the Incarnation”. In both cases it’s relatively easy to work out the meaning of the words sufficiently to be able to summarise them in coherent sentences. God’s creative rationality has taken human form. The Higgs boson is the particle that ensures other particles have mass.

But I can’t really get my mind half as easily around what either of those statements mean. Perhaps that’s part of what’s so interesting in putting them side by side. There’s something so strange about reality that attempts to describe it are as much about inventing a language to make sense of it as anything else.

Making sense of it in scientific terms is about generating the next experiment or refining the model by which we investigate and explain. Making sense of it in theological terms is rather more about exploring how to live in it in a way that is both true and good.

But there’s another thought that comes from putting these two things side by side: perhaps God is the meaning that gives meaning to all other lives, and God’s reason is what makes the universe’s rationality an objective quality, and not simple a human construct..

Of course, when people describe their life as meaningless, they’re not usually talking about it in philosophical terms, but existential and relational ones. Whatever we think about the world, the meaning that matters seems to come more from our relationships.

And so Christmas might celebrate that the reason behind all reasoning, the meaning underneath all meanings, relates to us, loves us, does not leave us alone. We celebrate the meaning-giving meaning of our lives.

But if all that’s too serious (or possibly just overworked twaddle), I leave you with a joke. A Higgs boson goes into church. The priest says, “Sorry, no Higgs bosons are allowed in here.” The boson says: “But how will you have Mass without me?”

Happy Christ’s Mass, as we celebrate the stuff of incarnation: the life of the Spirit gifted us in the matter of the sacrament, the love of God gifted to us in the company of other people.

Christmas Greeting Nazareth Video

This year I’ve branched out in Christmas greetings by adding a video. These are images of and from the Basilica of the Annunciation. “Verbum caro hic factum est” (here the Word was made flesh).

Yes, I know that that the Orthodox say it’s a bit up the road at St Gabriel’s Church by Mary’s Well, and that there are all sorts of questions over the historicity of Luke’s narrative. But the point is that the Church does not understand incarnation as a vague theological principle, but a story about one specific birth of one unique God-shaped human in the womb of one particular obedient woman at a definite point in time.

No-one may really know where the “here” was, but there was a “here”.

Anyway, that’s enough verbal theology: let’s get to the greeting.

Homeopathy, Intelligent Design and a bit of Mitchell and Webb

Earlier today I tweeted that I’d just overheard a woman in the medicine and science section of Blackwells saying “I can’t find a book on homeopathy” I commented that I should blooming well hope not!

This attracted the attention of someone who wanted to know why I thought homeopathy didn’t belong there, to which I could only reply that it’s not scientific medicine.

Thinking about this exchange led me to ponder the similarity between homeopathy and intelligent design. I don’t intend to get dragged into the kind of fruitless slanging matches James McGrath gets into over comparing creationism and mythicism mind you!

I am, however suggesting there is a basic similarity: Both seek to clothe their beliefs in the language of science, while being unable to satisfy the criteria of science. In a way that, of course, pays a back-handed compliment to the power of scientific explanation, while entirely subverting the methodology that lies at the heart of the enterprise.

But enough serious observation. I invite you to enjoy a little Mitchell and Webb instead: