Advent 1 2003 | Scottish Sunday

*Preached at Grace North Church December 7, 2003.*

As most of you know, I have just returned from a much needed vacation. It's been fifteen years since I've seen England, and I figured it was high time. It was a wonderful trip indeed. Most of my band Mind Furniture met together in London for a progressive rock festival, and before and after the festival Flavio was my traveling companion as we visited Scotland, York, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Norwich, and Cambridge.

One of the many highlights of the trip was Edinburgh. We were surprised to find the people friendlier by half than people in England, and though it was cold and blustery, we were able to dodge the rain and explore the winding cobblestone streets of the Old Town at length.

At the highest point in the city was Edinburgh Castle, where we caught a breathtaking view of the city, and got some sense of medieval life as it was lived in that massive stone keep. We toured the royal rooms, some of which are still used for events of state, and were amazed at an enormous room devoted entirely to the hagiography of King James the VI of Scotland.

His was a fascinating story indeed, and has some bearing not only on Scottish history, but upon our preparations for advent as well. King James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her husband Lord Darnley. James was a wan and sickly child, and would remain in frail health for the whole of his life. His father was murdered when he was not yet a year old, probably on the order of his mother. Queen Mary was deposed by the Scottish lords when James was just barely a year old, and she fled to England to seek safe haven from her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth did indeed keep her safe for the next twenty years, in the Tower of London, after which she had her killed. Forget the peasants, folks, forget the foreign powers-when you're royalty, your real enemies are your own flesh and blood.

With Mary gone, pretty much for good, King James was crowned King of Scotland at the ripe old age of thirteen months. Scottish reformer John Knox preached at his coronation.

James was one of the most strenuously educated monarchs in history. It was said that he mastered Latin before he could speak his native Scots, and before he came of age he spoke Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian, and Spanish fluently. As a result, he was one of the few heads of state who conducted business abroad without the need for translators. In addition to languages, he was also well schooled in composition, history, astronomy, philosophy, and theology.

All of this learning was not in vain, as he proved to be an able ruler. He actively began to govern Scotland when he was nineteen, and continued as her monarch for thirty-six years. During this time, Queen Elizabeth groomed him as her successor, and they kept up a lively-though sometimes contentious-correspondence.

He is not only known for his letters, however. King James was a prolific writer, and was widely read in his day. He had a friendly and accessible prose style that eschewed the didactic pretensions of most scholarly writing of his time, and this made him a very popular author indeed, not only among the intelligencia, but amongst the common folk as well. He published volumes of poems, and books on statesmanship and theology, including a two volume exploration of witchcraft and demonology.

He was no slouch, then, as either a ruler or a scholar, and he was well-loved by his subjects. This love was to extend exponentially very soon, for when Elizabeth died in 1603, he was proclaimed King, not just of Scotland, but of England as well. Amazingly, the English did not chafe at being ruled by a Scot, but welcomed him with open arms. His procession from Scotland down to London turned into a parade as thousands joined in, turning the journey into a travelling party, and a festival atmosphere pervaded the island. James was so overwhelmed by the outpouring of emotion for him that he granted over 300 knighthoods on the journey south alone-more than Elizabeth had done in her entire reign.

Now, I'd like to point out a sizable irony, here. England had long suffered the obstinacy of the Scots. They were not a people who were easily conquered. If any of you have seen Braveheart or Rob Roy, you know what I mean. England had never entirely succeeded in cowing the Scots, who fought fiercely for their independence, even if it had come to be only the appearance of independence. No English monarch had succeeded in uniting England and Scotland into one nation, and none would.

Instead it took a Scotsman to do it. And in so doing scholarly, effeminate, sickly King James did what hale and manly Robert the Bruce and William Wallace were unable to do-nay, did not dream of doing. For while these two Scottish heroes fought to simply be free of English rule, James, without spilling a drop of blood, conquered the English.

The Scots would not suffer an English king to be their lord, but a Scottish king to rule the English, heck yeah! That was payback, my friends, and the Scottish reveled in it. And amazingly, the English did not seem to notice the slight. It was King James himself who coined the term "Great Britain" to designate the united island nation.

Though his mother was a Roman Catholic, and he had been schooled by Presbyterians, James supported the Church of England as Elizabeth had done, and he was a great fan of John Donne, whom he appointed Dean of St. Paul's cathedral.

He also was responsible for colonizing New England, for under his reign Virginia, Massachusetts, and Nova Scotia, which actually means "New Scotland" were founded and supported.

A man of ambiguous sexuality, the English were fond of saying "Elizabeth was King, and now James is Queen," and indeed, he eschewed such macho pursuits as warfare and was an avid supporter of the arts. Shakespeare and Ben Johnson were favorites of his, and "Macbeth" was written specifically for him. Shakespeare's company was even known as "the King's Men."

But for all his many accomplishments, King James is best known for commissioning the Bible that bears his name. In 1604 he called a committee of 54 translators together and charged them with creating a definitive translation of the holy scriptures to be used in all churches in Great Britain. The resulting King James Version is probably the only great work of English literature produced by committee, and is the best-selling book of all time.

He ruled England well, and at the age of 59, finally succumbed to the poor health that had always plagued him. He died on March 27, 1625, and was interred in Westminster Abbey.

King James' clever victory over the English is instructive for us on the eve of Advent. For just as no English king could command the hearts of the Scots, nor indeed, could unite them, just so our Christian tradition tells us that no amount of laws and rules could bend the hearts of human beings, and God's attempts to unite humankind to himself had been repeatedly frustrated by human obstinacy.

It required a clever end run, and in the incarnation the Christian tradition finds just such a solution. If God cannot conquer the human heart, then the human heart must conquer God. One of the greatest teachers of the early Christian church, Arius, affirmed that Jesus' birth was miraculous, but he did not teach that Jesus was born God. Instead, he was a man as other men, whose life was so virtuous, his vision so mystically united to God's own, that when, out of obedience to God's call he submitted to the baptism of John, the heavens opened and the spirit of God descended as a dove, and entered into him, divinizing him. The account of Jesus' baptism in the Gospel of Mark was originally supportive of Arius' teaching, as the voice which boomed from the heavens proclaimed, "This is my beloved Son, today have I begotten thee."

The Orthodox version, of God becoming human, maintains God as the conqueror of nature, but Arius' teaching is far more radical. For when Jesus becomes divine, he takes all that it is to be human with him. When Jesus becomes God, he ushers all of humankind into divinity as well.

For despite laws, covenants, and prophets, there was an unbreachable gulf between God and humankind, they were alien creatures to one another. But when a human became God, the two became family, and united forevermore.

Just as no powerful English king could forcibly unite Scotland and England with any number of troops, a vulnerable and delicate Scot united them without shedding a single drop of blood. And just as no God in all his glory could command the hearts of men, yet one man in his weakness and frailty has captured our hearts as none other ever has, and has made us sons and daughters of God.

The reverse-incarnation of Arius' teaching is a clever end-run around the gulf that forever threatened to separate humankind and God. Arius' teaching may well have become the dominant teaching in the Christian church, were it not for the intervention of the emperor Constantine, who found the idea of a peasant assuming the mantle of divinity far too threatening to his dominance, and preferred instead the orthodox notion of God coming down to earth. Best to keep one's hierarchies clear, as the emperor was, in his own mind, a reflection of the divine hierarchy. At a church council called by Constantine to settle the question, Arius was condemned, and a large part of Christendom with him.

But Arius' teaching is too common-sense, to reasonable to play dead. Recent polls suggest that the majority of Christians in mainline Protestant denominations lean more towards Arius' teaching about the divinity of Jesus than the orthodox position, and I count myself amongst that number. But regardless of one's Christological proclivities, in Advent we pause to celebrate the coming of the one who unites humankind and the divine, and to contemplate our own readiness to receive him.

And celebrate is the appropriate word. For we do not fear the judgement of an alien being, a God removed from human frailty whose compassion can only be a willed act of imagination. Christian mythology clearly states that our judge will be Jesus himself, a human like you and me, fully knowledgeable of the hardships and vagaries of human living. His compassion is famous, his justice tempered with mercy, and his understanding like none other. In the end we do not stand before God, so much as we stand before ourselves, for if Jesus is not wholly and completely one of us, then the incarnation-no matter how you interpret it-has no meaning.

This week we lost one of our most beloved parishioners, Harriet McCollum For years her husband Jim watched her dignity ebb away as she succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Harriet was a founding member of this community, and all of us who knew her miss her compassionate interest in others, and her persistent joviality. These jewels of her personality have been robbed from her by her disease, but it is our Christian hope that they have now once again been restored. As Harriet stands before her Lord in judgement, as she most certainly believed she would, tradition tells us that all the dross and chaff of illness and ignorance will fall away, and leave her clothed in nothing but the kindness and goodness that we knew in her. Let us keep Harriet's soul in our prayers in the coming weeks, as well as Jim and his family. Rest eternal grant to her, O Lord: and let Light Perpetual shine upon her. Let us pray.

Jesus, this Advent we look forward to your coming, and for the uniting of the two great kingdoms of earth and heaven. For in entering into every aspect of human life, you divinized it, and broke the power of death and hell forever. Help us to live your redeemed life in fear of none, and in the hope of eternal life. Judge us not by the law, we pray, but by the tender knowledge of the frailty of human life. Amen.