WE HEARD it first from Mary. She is the source of what we know about Christ’s birth and childhood. Her place in the narrative of Christianity is unique, and to her we owe a high place of honour. But, like all the saints, her sanctity is the reflection of a greater light. Anglican piety has guarded Mary’s reputation from a tendency to grant her a divinity which is not hers. Our Church’s revulsion from the excesses of Mariolatry, which earned pre-Reformation England the name of “Our Lady’s Dowry”, sometimes leads to an awkward silence in Anglican praxis.
Surely, now, we have moved on. The days are long past when Bishop Gore banned the use in his diocese of The English Hymnal when it included invocation of saints, and Athelstan Riley’s “Ye watchers and ye holy ones”. In 1906, the attribution to Mary of the title “Bearer of the eternal Word” (Theotokos) in the second verse sent a shudder through the bench of bishops.
THAT was 100 years ago. We now have a more balanced attitude to the veneration of the saints. In the case of our Lady, this is helped by a closer attention to the biblical account in Luke’s Gospel. A relevant passage is based on Mary’s own recollection: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2.7).
The details of the manger and overcrowded inn have no obvious allegorical or scriptural precedent, but they do have the incidental character of personal reminiscence. Why mention a manger unless it was there, and who would remember it, if not Mary herself?
That is one way of looking at the story. There is another, in which Luke’s narrative is analysed minutely to uncover every possible source except the obvious one. This process has sometimes been taken to extraordinary lengths, one theory suggesting that the manger owes its origin not to an historical event, but to God’s curse on mankind. Part of Adam’s punishment had been to cultivate land which grew only thorns and thistles (Genesis 3.18). A hay harvest from good grass was therefore a sign that God had lifted the curse, thereby allowing the use of hay as bedding in a manger appropriate for his future son.
Biblical study of source criticism and textual analysis plays a useful part in our understanding of the scriptures, but, in this case, the story of Christ’s nativity has acquired a higher authority, a legitimacy conferred by the faith of generations, and one which includes those wonderful non-biblical additions: the ox and the ass, and — later still — the Magi’s exciting names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.
ARTISTS depicting the nativity help us to understand the miraculous interaction between the two realities of earth and heaven. Piero della Francesca’s painting presents us with those overlapping realms. On the left side of the picture, angels tread barefoot, playing their lutes and singing, some with tiaras in their golden hair. On the opposite side sits Joseph on a saddle, leg crossed casually over knee, chatting with the shepherds. In the centre, Mary kneels in adoration of the child, who is central to both realms.
Meanwhile, the ox peers gently from behind, the donkey brays suddenly, and the magpie sits unusually still and silent. In the background is the artist’s home-town, Borgo Sansepolcro, his neighbours’ houses clearly visible.
Two realities, but one world. The ageing artist — this was, they say, his last work — gives us a way of seeing the dual nature of Christ’s incarnation. Story-tellers like Luke, and artists like Piero, give us the truth with a lightness of touch, where our theology with all its baggage drags us down. Homoousios or homoiousios? Should that iota that once split Christendom be allowed to make more than a jot of difference to us now?
THE artist gives us another surprise. As with many Renaissance paintings, Mary is a young, beautifully adorned Italian lady, belonging to 15th-century Florence, not to first-century Palestine. We are so used to seeing biblical scenes through the eyes of Renaissance Italians that the anachronism does not surprise. And yet, when Stanley Spencer uses the same device and imagines Christ preaching at Cookham Regatta, we gasp; and some are shocked.
Venetians and Florentines — familiar through their trade connections with the costumes and customs of Aleppo, Antioch, and Damascus, if not of Palestine itself — would have felt the same jolt at seeing biblical figures dressed like themselves. The artists created images not only to delight, but to shock.
And what of us? Whether we approach the story of the incarnation through art’s deliberate time-shift, or through the simplicity of St Luke’s account, it is in worship that we come closest to the mystery of the word made flesh, in words familiar to us from the service of Nine Lessons and Carols: “Let it be our care and delight to hear again the message of the angels, and in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the babe lying in a manger.”
The collect for Christmas Day:
Almighty God, you have given us your only-begotten Son
to take our nature upon him
and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin:
grant that we, who have been born again
and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired Anglican priest.
Piero della Francesca’s Nativity is now back on display at the National Gallery after three years of conservation treatment. Formerly displayed as an altarpiece, it is now understood to be a very grand domestic painting, and a carved walnut frame of matching period and provenance has been acquired for the new display. www.nationalgallery.org.uk