I am delighted to welcome Pen Wilcock to my blog today. Her latest book, Into the Heart of Advent, welcomes the reader to join her as she chats to Jesus about all sorts of subjects that perplex her, including homelessness and hospitality, mental health and the challenges of neuro-diversity, as well as poverty. Here she shares with us the first conversation from that book.
I stand in the shop looking indecisively at the cards on display, slowly twirling the revolving rack. I’ve chosen the ones I like, with deer and robins and snow, but I think in all truth I ought to pick out at least a few showing the infant Jesus and his mother. Because that’s what Christmas is all about, right? The nativity, and at the heart of it the Holy Family. The problem is, I don’t like them. Mary looks either demure or mournful, and the baby Jesus stares out reproachfully at our fallen world, raising two fingers in blessing like a miniature boy scout or the youngest member of an extremely secret society.
Someone is standing next to me. I glance over my shoulder not wanting to put pressure upon the patience of another customer ticking off Christmas obligations early. And then I do a double take — “Jesus! Where did you come from? I mean…Hello.” And just like that, there he is again. Himself, who I haven’t seen in ages.
“Stick with the robins,” he suggests. “Those are awful.”
“But, shouldn’t I have at least some nativity ones? Christmas — it’s all about family, isn’t it? Especially your family.”
“My family…” says Jesus: “Look, shall we get out of this shop?”
I pay for the few packs I’m sure I want, shove them into my bag with the TV guide and the oranges, and hurry outside to find him. Then, just like old times, we stroll along the seafront in the wind.
“This unbreakable connection between family and Christmas comes back to haunt me every year,” I tell him. “I’m divorced, I have a difficult relationship with my step family, and my family of origin — ha! Don’t even go there! There’s nothing like Christmas to rub it all in, that all too familiar ambiance of utter despair. And there are the cards with you as a baby, cradled in Mary’s arms while Joseph stands protectingly beside her.”
Jesus says nothing for a moment, and I glance at him to see his reaction. He grins at me. “Are you even thinking what you’re saying? My mother… reckless prophetess writing protest songs and trying to steer me into her idea of who I should be. My mother conscripting my brothers into getting me sectioned. Joseph thinking best to divorce her before they even began, and introducing his betrothed to his relatives on the night she was due to drop an embarrassingly early baby. Awkward.”
I consider this in silence.
“If there’s one useful take-away from looking at my family,” he adds, “it’s that you just get the hand life deals you. It’s the part you can’t plan, even if you try. Joseph chose cautiously, carefully; he well knew how important it is to find a good wife. He was after a godly woman. But then he got a really godly woman, and that shook his world! Dreams and visions, angels and journeys, soldiers with swords in their hands. He had no idea what he was taking on when he asked Mary to be his wife.”
I stop, turn to face him, pulling my coat closer around me because the wind is so cold. “Then, what — if you could pick out one thing — what would you say Christmas is all about?”
“Me? My point of view?” He looks at me. “I’d say Christmas is about saying ‘yes’. That’s the one thing Mary and Joseph and I all had in common. Mary said ‘yes’ to the angel, and Joseph — against his own inclination — said ‘yes’ to marrying Mary after all, and I said ‘yes’ to… well, to everything it meant as things unfolded. ‘Yes’ to being here, ‘yes’ to pouring out all my strength to bring healing and hope, ‘yes’ to offering a template for living that’s actually going to work. We said ‘yes’, and that was the thing that brought us together.”
I nod, slowly, taking this in. “That’s what made you family — saying ‘yes’.”
Jesus is never impatient, but I do detect just a tad of frustration in the movement of his hand. “Can we get something clear?” he says. “My family is everyone who says ‘yes’ to life and love. My family isn’t frozen in time back in Nazareth. Anyone who wants can join my family. You are my family, if you want to be. Just bear in mind, when you trace the way things went for Mary and Joseph and me, there is a cost. But isn’t there always, to loving?”
Pen Wilcock writes Christian theology both in the form of fiction and non-fiction. She has worked in hospice, school and prison chaplaincy contexts, and pastored a number of congregations. Her particular focus is Gospel simplicity. She lives very quietly and reclusively in Hastings on England’s south coast. She blogs at Kindred of the Quiet Way.