Advent: 16 December 2023
Greetings,
We’ve reached a letter with the highest scrabble score of 10 in today’s Advent Calendar – Q. What could Q be for? Well, how about Quirinius, whom some children believe only appears in the Nativity story to trip them up during their reading of Luke chapter 2.
2 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered.
Publius Sulpicius Quirinius came from a town near Rome, born in about 51 BC. His roles in the Roman Empire probably included governor of Crete and Cyrene, legate of Galatia, tutor to Emperor Augustus’ grandson, then legate of Syria which included Samaria, Judea and Idumea. The census of which Luke writes is also mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus. The death of Quirinius in 21 AD is relayed by the Roman historian Tacitus, and he is also mentioned in inscriptions found in Pisidian Antioch. Coins issued by Quirinius have been discovered.
The appearance of Quirinius in Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus situates the nativity in the context of power. Rome was the overarching power, while client kings in Jerusalem and elsewhere helped them rule (see Advent Calendar 7 December on Herod). The census was a way to exercise that power, counting the population, knowing who was there and able to be taxed. The birth of Jesus ushered in a different king, a radical government, one of peace, one of love. This sonnet by Waldo Williams, originally written in Welsh and translated by Rowan Williams, captures that contrast between the empire represented by Quirinius, and Jesus, the vulnerable Lamb of God:
In the Days of Caesar
In the days of Caesar, when his subjects went to be reckoned,
there was a poem made, too dark for him (naïve with power) to read.
It was a bunch of shepherds who discovered
in Bethlehem of Judah, the great music beyond reason and reckoning:
shepherds, the sort of folk who leave the ninety-nine behind
so as to bring the stray back home, they heard it clear,
the subtle assonances of the day, dawning toward cock-crow,
the birthday of the Lamb of God, shepherd of mortals.
Well, little people, and my little nation, can you see
the secret buried in you, that no Caesar ever captures in his lists?
Will not the shepherd come to fetch us in our desert,
gathering us in to give us birth again, weaving us into one
in a song heard in the sky over Bethlehem?
He seeks us out as wordhoard for his workmanship, the laureate of heaven.
Questions of how faith should relate to power are constantly asked in religious discourse. Here are two approaches from my box of quotations which offer helpful guidelines.
First, to those who say that faith should stay out of politics, here is a salutary rejoinder from Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin in the Fields, London, from Power and Passion:
The only Christians who say we should keep politics and the gospel apart are those who enjoy a comfortable social and economic status and assume the point of Christianity is to underwrite the privileges they already have.
But on the other hand, there are terrible dangers when religion seeks to exercise power. Jonathan Sacks, the late Chief Rabbi, would often distinguish between power and influence and he always came down on the side of influence, as here in Not in God’s Name:
Religion acquires influence when it relinquishes power.
And for an image for today, how about one of the principal places of political power in the United Kingdom – the Houses of Parliament? Here they are with the Elizabeth Tower holding Big Ben, the great bell, in a picture I took last week when in London. I hope that people of faith – alongside others of good will – use their influence wisely, and exercise power with compassion in that extraordinary building.
Yours,
Donald.