The end of Togginess - Bodily Salvation
2 Samuel 7.1-11, 16; Luke 1.26-38 (Advent 4B)
It seemed as if Togs
were for the chop when Sir Terry Wogan retired from his weekday radio
show. But the popularity of Weekend
Wogan and the Children in Need Appeal means they’ve actually continued to
thrive. What is a Tog? TOGs, also
known as Terry's Old Geezers or Gals, are more than fans of the radio
personality. Togginess is a state of mind recognised by many, as that feeling
of being old before your time. In this light, TOGs are famous for their fierce
resentment of anybody younger than themselves reflected in exclamations such as
'They don't know they're born!' and 'Clear off, you young limb!'
Another tell-tale sign of a TOG is a flat cap and an inexplicable penchant for driving their Volvos in the centre lane of the motorway at 60mph. TOGs may also be recognised by their use of such arcane phrases as 'Is it me?', the self-pitying, 'I never saw a bar of chocolate until I was fourteen', and the perplexed, 'Why did I come upstairs again?' You see TOGS are subject to a condition known as a 'senior moment', a euphemism, to indicate a temporary loss of all marbles to anyone over 50.
The idea of Togginess has really caught on - there are TOG groups, a TOG website, even a TOG convention. And aren't those surprisingly popular TV programmes featuring nothing but grumpy old women or grumpy old men pontificating about all matters under the sun, really just Togginess. Victor Meldrew unleashed!
I bet you know a TOG or two don't you. Maybe there's one sitting next to you right now? Or perhaps you are one of those brave souls who admit to being a TOG! Of that age when, well, things begin to drop off! When late night television induces sleep; when elasticated waists are a godsend; when your teeth spend the night in a place other than your bed; and, when wrinkle cream becomes a dent filler rather than a surface smoother. Togginess is another way of describing aging - that thing I didn't ever plan to do when my stamina seemed endless and my abilities were always increasing.
All this talk of Togginess pokes fun at aging, the decline of powers and the grumpiness that goes with it, but in our heart of hearts we know these things are intimations of our demise. It may be another ten years, another twenty, even another fifty - but all of us who are TOGS know somewhere inside ourselves that there is less time left to us than the time we have had. Endings - personal, social, and theological are a strong feature of Advent, but all this talk of Christmas obscures the call to reflect on final things.
I can't help thinking that King David was in something of that frame of mind in these encounters with God through the voice of the prophet Nathan. He's come a long way. Shepherd boy to King. And he's seen the cost of it, the deaths, the fear, the conflict. The House of King Saul ascendant, and then broken. How will it go for the House of David? The Lord, we are told, has given him rest from all his enemies, but for how long? Surely a great name can only last through something great and lasting - a Temple of cedar and stone say? That future generations should look up and say, if you want to see what David did, look around you. A Stonehenge to signify God's honouring - of course! But a little bit of everlasting kudos for David wouldn't go amiss, to preserve his name when he's long gone. That would go some way to warding off what Togginess threatens.
But God has other ideas. David's memory won't be hallowed in cedar and stone, but in the all too soft, all too risky, all too vulnerable body of a child - "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body…" Not the things of prestige, and wealth, and power, and monuments, and towering edifices, but the things of bodies, of lust, of frailty, of pain, of delight, of dependence, of blood, of family, of loathing and, of love. Adultery and murder and bereavement - things that are all too bodily real - will figure before that promise of an offspring comes to anything. And in the sex and the violence and the loss the all too fragile nature of bodies is painfully obvious. The monumental architecture of a pyramid, of a castle, of a great wall, of a temple, of a cathedral is of a wholly other order to the bleeding, injury prone, sickening, dependent, anxiety ridden, and aging frame of a human form.
"No, David," says God, "I need no temple of cedar and stone from you. My promise to you will be fulfilled in the blood and the feeling, the agony and the ecstasy, the dexterity and the decrepitude of your body."
That bring me to the huddled female form on the front of your notice sheet (and above). What you see, I hope, is the frailty of a young woman, a slip of a girl; a simple shift clinging to her figure, her arms bare, suddenly awoken from sleep perhaps, her knees drawn up, she cowers against the wall of her sleeping room. She is thin, troubled looking, and possibly feeling threatened. She avoids looking directly at the presence that has invaded her room. She certainly doesn't look as if she considers herself favoured - much perplexity sums it up. As one scholar suggests, Mary's exclamation at the end of the encounter, "Let it be to me according to your word" is more a shrug of resignation faced with the inevitable within the world of the sexual politics of first century Palestine, than the triumphant consent we usually take it to be. The painting is suggestive of that fearful acquiescence.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's version of the story of the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary her pregnancy and its purpose has none of the studious contemplation and noble acceptance of traditional renderings so beloved of Renaissance artists. This is a radical reinterpretation in which the humanity - the bodiliness if you like - of Mary is plain to see. Her holiness is apparent by the halo, but the posture and the look make her clearly a woman not a superhuman saint. The women figures of the pre-Raphaelite painters like Rossetti do have a romantic, otherworldliness about them - but those ethereal faces and forms all the more emphasise the feminine, passionate, mysterious and sensual nature of flesh, human flesh.
The picture is almost wholly restricted to white and the three primary colours - a curious goldness hangs around the angel’s feet, blue drapes signify heaven and the virgin, red hair brings to mind Christ's blood, and the whiteness of cloths and the lily mark purity. The symbols that any earlier artist might have used are all there - yet the picture makes a new statement. When it was exhibited in 1850 criticism rained down on Rossetti and he vowed never to show it again in public.
The Church sees fit to label this cowering girl the Blessed Virgin Mary - and hear it not as a title but as a description of her body. Virgin here can designate nothing else but a body. Her swollen womb is just that, her carrying as tiring as any mother-to-be's carrying, her labour as painful and exhausting, her birthing as bloody and as emotional as any birthing. God will be born a body of a body. And we will carol the promise to King David long ago made new again in amniotic fluid spilt, a slimy form squealing and stretching in air for the first time, and breasts heavy with milk.
That's wonder; that's gospel. God is born a body to make holy every body. Eugene Peterson puts it like this, "The birth of Jesus, kept fresh in our imaginations and prayers in song and story, keeps our feet on solid creation ground and responsive to every nuance of obedience and praise evoked by the life all around us." Salvation comes to us in a body, not in abstract ideas. This is the antidote to Togginess. When the noise of a child in the aisle annoys you, remember that. When some loud youth is doing something silly in public, remember that. And when the Togginess revolves around your own failing powers - the drug you must take for the rest of your life, the greying of hair, the frailty of muscle or bone, remember it is you, the you of body not just soul that Christ saves.
I hear people say Christ die as a young man. He didn't, in the world of the first century Mediterranean 90 per cent of people died by the mid-forties. Most of those who heard Jesus teach would have been younger than he, disease ridden, and knowing they had a only a few years left. Jesus was a TOG. He redeems all Togginess. Don't let your body harbour regret and resentment, for the babe to be born came to set you free to live eternity in a BODY. If you won't believe me, believe Saint Paul:
'We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.' (Rom 8.23)
Praise be to God!
Another tell-tale sign of a TOG is a flat cap and an inexplicable penchant for driving their Volvos in the centre lane of the motorway at 60mph. TOGs may also be recognised by their use of such arcane phrases as 'Is it me?', the self-pitying, 'I never saw a bar of chocolate until I was fourteen', and the perplexed, 'Why did I come upstairs again?' You see TOGS are subject to a condition known as a 'senior moment', a euphemism, to indicate a temporary loss of all marbles to anyone over 50.
The idea of Togginess has really caught on - there are TOG groups, a TOG website, even a TOG convention. And aren't those surprisingly popular TV programmes featuring nothing but grumpy old women or grumpy old men pontificating about all matters under the sun, really just Togginess. Victor Meldrew unleashed!
I bet you know a TOG or two don't you. Maybe there's one sitting next to you right now? Or perhaps you are one of those brave souls who admit to being a TOG! Of that age when, well, things begin to drop off! When late night television induces sleep; when elasticated waists are a godsend; when your teeth spend the night in a place other than your bed; and, when wrinkle cream becomes a dent filler rather than a surface smoother. Togginess is another way of describing aging - that thing I didn't ever plan to do when my stamina seemed endless and my abilities were always increasing.
All this talk of Togginess pokes fun at aging, the decline of powers and the grumpiness that goes with it, but in our heart of hearts we know these things are intimations of our demise. It may be another ten years, another twenty, even another fifty - but all of us who are TOGS know somewhere inside ourselves that there is less time left to us than the time we have had. Endings - personal, social, and theological are a strong feature of Advent, but all this talk of Christmas obscures the call to reflect on final things.
I can't help thinking that King David was in something of that frame of mind in these encounters with God through the voice of the prophet Nathan. He's come a long way. Shepherd boy to King. And he's seen the cost of it, the deaths, the fear, the conflict. The House of King Saul ascendant, and then broken. How will it go for the House of David? The Lord, we are told, has given him rest from all his enemies, but for how long? Surely a great name can only last through something great and lasting - a Temple of cedar and stone say? That future generations should look up and say, if you want to see what David did, look around you. A Stonehenge to signify God's honouring - of course! But a little bit of everlasting kudos for David wouldn't go amiss, to preserve his name when he's long gone. That would go some way to warding off what Togginess threatens.
But God has other ideas. David's memory won't be hallowed in cedar and stone, but in the all too soft, all too risky, all too vulnerable body of a child - "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body…" Not the things of prestige, and wealth, and power, and monuments, and towering edifices, but the things of bodies, of lust, of frailty, of pain, of delight, of dependence, of blood, of family, of loathing and, of love. Adultery and murder and bereavement - things that are all too bodily real - will figure before that promise of an offspring comes to anything. And in the sex and the violence and the loss the all too fragile nature of bodies is painfully obvious. The monumental architecture of a pyramid, of a castle, of a great wall, of a temple, of a cathedral is of a wholly other order to the bleeding, injury prone, sickening, dependent, anxiety ridden, and aging frame of a human form.
"No, David," says God, "I need no temple of cedar and stone from you. My promise to you will be fulfilled in the blood and the feeling, the agony and the ecstasy, the dexterity and the decrepitude of your body."
That bring me to the huddled female form on the front of your notice sheet (and above). What you see, I hope, is the frailty of a young woman, a slip of a girl; a simple shift clinging to her figure, her arms bare, suddenly awoken from sleep perhaps, her knees drawn up, she cowers against the wall of her sleeping room. She is thin, troubled looking, and possibly feeling threatened. She avoids looking directly at the presence that has invaded her room. She certainly doesn't look as if she considers herself favoured - much perplexity sums it up. As one scholar suggests, Mary's exclamation at the end of the encounter, "Let it be to me according to your word" is more a shrug of resignation faced with the inevitable within the world of the sexual politics of first century Palestine, than the triumphant consent we usually take it to be. The painting is suggestive of that fearful acquiescence.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's version of the story of the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary her pregnancy and its purpose has none of the studious contemplation and noble acceptance of traditional renderings so beloved of Renaissance artists. This is a radical reinterpretation in which the humanity - the bodiliness if you like - of Mary is plain to see. Her holiness is apparent by the halo, but the posture and the look make her clearly a woman not a superhuman saint. The women figures of the pre-Raphaelite painters like Rossetti do have a romantic, otherworldliness about them - but those ethereal faces and forms all the more emphasise the feminine, passionate, mysterious and sensual nature of flesh, human flesh.
The picture is almost wholly restricted to white and the three primary colours - a curious goldness hangs around the angel’s feet, blue drapes signify heaven and the virgin, red hair brings to mind Christ's blood, and the whiteness of cloths and the lily mark purity. The symbols that any earlier artist might have used are all there - yet the picture makes a new statement. When it was exhibited in 1850 criticism rained down on Rossetti and he vowed never to show it again in public.
The Church sees fit to label this cowering girl the Blessed Virgin Mary - and hear it not as a title but as a description of her body. Virgin here can designate nothing else but a body. Her swollen womb is just that, her carrying as tiring as any mother-to-be's carrying, her labour as painful and exhausting, her birthing as bloody and as emotional as any birthing. God will be born a body of a body. And we will carol the promise to King David long ago made new again in amniotic fluid spilt, a slimy form squealing and stretching in air for the first time, and breasts heavy with milk.
That's wonder; that's gospel. God is born a body to make holy every body. Eugene Peterson puts it like this, "The birth of Jesus, kept fresh in our imaginations and prayers in song and story, keeps our feet on solid creation ground and responsive to every nuance of obedience and praise evoked by the life all around us." Salvation comes to us in a body, not in abstract ideas. This is the antidote to Togginess. When the noise of a child in the aisle annoys you, remember that. When some loud youth is doing something silly in public, remember that. And when the Togginess revolves around your own failing powers - the drug you must take for the rest of your life, the greying of hair, the frailty of muscle or bone, remember it is you, the you of body not just soul that Christ saves.
I hear people say Christ die as a young man. He didn't, in the world of the first century Mediterranean 90 per cent of people died by the mid-forties. Most of those who heard Jesus teach would have been younger than he, disease ridden, and knowing they had a only a few years left. Jesus was a TOG. He redeems all Togginess. Don't let your body harbour regret and resentment, for the babe to be born came to set you free to live eternity in a BODY. If you won't believe me, believe Saint Paul:
'We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.' (Rom 8.23)
Praise be to God!