Advent: 20 December 2022
Greetings,
In our Advent A to Z we open the window today for the letter U. U is for… the University of St Andrews. And what I’ve found is a rare copy of directions for a University of St Andrews Nativity. It seems that some strange person has offered guidance to the story of Christ’s birth via the University’s own buildings, spaces and rooms, possibly 93 of them. Can you find your way through the buildings setting out from Eden and returning there?
University of St Andrews Nativity
One day an angel left the heavenly presence of God, from the Eden Court he kept, and came to a house where a girl was at work. “I bring you news – God has chosen you to be the mother of his Son. He will renew the Old Union between God and his people, by making a new Union in your Son, whom you will call Jesus.” The girl agreed to be the gateway for God’s love in the world. “I can – more than this – I will say yes.”
But her betrothed Joseph was not happy. When he heard St Mary’s tale, he found it hard to swallow – gateway for God’s love? This was not right. No Biomedical Sciences Research Complex would get funding for such a project. But an angel appeared to him in a dream and reassured him – the child was a New Technology Centre, and taking Mary to be his wife would bless their Careers Centred on joinery.
Mary went to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth – she who had been Barron for many years but was now expecting her firstborn – and so Mary entered St John’s house, even before the Baptist was born. The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leapt when the women embraced, conscious in Mary’s womb of the younger – “Hallelujah!” John announced in leaping. “God is no longer in a museum, stored away.”
At that time there was a census and all people had to go to their ancestral home – Joseph and Mary went to his old burgh, Bethlehem, the city of David. Russelling of sheep was one concern of the governor Quirinius. And when Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem, the time came for her to give birth, but there was no place for them to stay, not where the porters lodged, nor in any mailroom or female room, nor master’s room, nor chaplain’s house, nor where Beethoven lodged many years hence. Instead, they were shown into a byre, where Mary gave birth to her child, a son, the holy saviour, St Salvator’s birth.
There were shepherds in a field nearby, the mansefield, overlooking the town, from Castlecliffe. They were looking after their flocks of sheep, whitehorns on the whole. Suddenly, in the sky there were angels who said to them, “Today in David’s town a Saviour has been born for you. He will unite the upper college of heaven with the lower college of earth to make a united college: all are one in this new college of peace and goodwill.” The shepherds – whom some legends have named as Buchanan, Laidlaw, McIntosh, Andrew Melville, Purdie, and Bell Pettigrew – made their way by the edgecliffe path across the north haugh into the town, and entered the shed where Jesus was laid, and they worshipped him. They returned to their sheep to whom some have given names – Gatty, Jeeves, Wardlaw, Gannochy and Willie – russelled once but safely returned.
Now there were wise ones in the east who studied the stars from their observatory, and had seen a star rising in the east. They consulted all the astrological arts, building on texts in their main libraries by authorities on the heavens from King James to J. F. Allen, and discovered in an annexe to the Hebdomadar’s Almanac that the Messiah would be born not in a castle house but in Bethlehem. And so they followed the star, finding refreshments on their journey at rector’s cafés, stopping each night, making fires of wood burning down by morning, dreaming of sports centred on the racing of camels on playing fields, by pavilions of splendour. The star led them to Jerusalem, where they entered through the Deans’ Court to the Parliament Hall of King Herod, telling him they wished to worship the new king. Herod was angry and called his chief priests and scribes together in the Senate Room, to tell him where the Messiah was to be born. One source names these scholars as Kennedy, Walter Bower, John Honey, John Burnet, Jack Cole and Harold Mitchell. Bethlehem they said.
Herod then sent the astrologers to Bethlehem to discover where the Messiah had been born, so that – he said – he would worship him. But in reality, Herod was his arch-enemy. And so the wise travellers carried on to Bethlehem, their camels crossing the Kinnessburn, going through the College Gate, down Dyers Brae, along Butts Wynd until they found Mary, Joseph and the little child Jesus, and they worshipped him, and opening their treasure chests, they offered gifts most rare that no University Shop could offer – roundels of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The wise ones – whom a rarely-consulted source names as St Katharine, Agnes Blackadder and Renée Powell – then went back to their own country by a different way, taking South Street, rather than returning to North Street, to avoid becoming Martyrs as so many young boys sadly did.
And so our tale is nearly over – this gift of a child in Royal David’s City was not merely for one city, but all cities, we might say a University – house and hall alike. Word of St Salvator’s love spread through halls and chapels, and across the Scottish Oceans, instituted in the bringing of relics of St Andrew west by St Regulus. Pilgrims were drawn across Albany, from Angus, Irvine, Bute and elsewhere to Fife, parking their losses and fears in the hope of God’s blessing. We know some of these followers of the Son of God are inspired by St Leonard’s faith and St Gregory’s wisdom, while others are open to the leading of God, whatever he asc of us. And so wherever we live and work, we can find in this vulnerable child, God with us, reconciliation, peace and eternal life, an Eden Campus opened to us in this world and beyond.
Here is the Younger Hall as it looked last Friday – one of the buildings which has found its way into our University Nativity:
Happy searching! (And this map may help: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/media/university/maps/wwwmap.pdf)
Yours,
Donald.