From Saint to Santa

As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits (or elementary principles) of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily...

Colossians 2:6-9

The mythical character of Father Christmas is a product of the elementary principles of the world, of empty deceit and human tradition, but he is based on a real person who walked in the ways of Christ Jesus the Lord. That man was Nikolaos, an Archbishop of Myra, who lived in the 4th Century. (There are various ways to spell Nikolaos.)

Nikolaos was born to a wealthy family but his faith in Jesus Christ inspired him to leave his affluent lifestyle to become a monk. He gave away his entire inheritance. At about the time the Emperor Diocletian began a vicious persecution of Christians, Nikolas became pastor of a local congregation in Myra and so was singled out for particular abuse. It's said that his face was whipped, so that he carried visible scars for the rest of his life. Although there is no official record of Nikolaos attending the Council of Nicea, tradition puts him there defending the belief that Jesus is God. He took a lead re-structuring the church when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Towards the end of his life, he travelled widely to teach local groups of Christians.

As Archbishop, Nikolaos was respected for his generosity towards the poor. He was known as a protector of children and acted to save many from being sold into slavery and a life of prostitution. He gave many poor families enough money for dowries so their daughters could marry. In one story, in order to remain anonymous, he climbed on to the roof of a house and dropped some bags of money through the hole that let out the smoke from the fire. The bags, it's said, landed in the girls’ stockings handling by the fire to dry.

Nikolaos was held in such high regard that people immediately began commemorating the anniversary of his death, which is why we know the date (6 December), but not the precise year. Within 200 years, the day was an established church festival and his fame spread around the world.

The legend of St Nicholas emigrated to America as Sinterklass, then became Santa Claus. In the British Isles, it merged with a traditional character known as Old Father Winter to become Father Christmas. After, World War One, when Brits and Americans began to grow closer, Father Christmas and Santa Claus blended back into a single character.

In 1822, a poem by the American Clement Clarke Moore called, The Night Before Christmas, cemented the tradition of Santa delivering presents by night on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. In 1863, a cartoon in New York’s Harper’s Illustrated Weekly confirmed Santa’s appearance as an elderly, plump man dressed much like we expect to see him today. After Coca Cola advertising campaigns in the 1930s, Santa only ever wore red.

The first biography of St Nikolaos was not written until about 600 years after his death and so it's almost impossible to separate fact from legend. But as the legend of St Nikolaos evolved into Sinterklass and on into Santa Claus, he was appropriated by the consumer society to promote an annual spending spree. Today, Santa Claus is the poster boy of self-indulgence and extravagance. People do help the poor at Christmas but they give only a fraction of what they spend on themselves.

What would Saint Nikolaos think if he could see us now?

I will return to the series on contentment next weekend.

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014.

What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

CONTENTMENT (11): Paul's Inspiration

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:5-11

St Paul’s inspiration to learn contentment was the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was God, is God and always will be God but he didn’t consider the privileges of godhead something that he needed to cling hold of. He therefore, ‘made himself nothing’. He took a downward path; always downward. ‘And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient…’ As a human, He voluntarily, gladly chose to become obedient to God, obedient to the point of torture and execution!

A couple of times, Jesus explained that he said and did only the things that he saw his Father saying and doing (see John 5:30 & 6:38). Jesus did not please himself but was content from His cradle to His cross. I think it’s accurate to say that the Gospels do not record a single instance where He did something to please Himself, where He acted to reduce the inconvenience to Himself or to make His situation more comfortable.

There was the occasion recorded at the start of John 4, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees heard that He was baptising more disciples than John the Baptist, so he went to Galilee. Also, Mark 3 tells how Jesus took His disciples to the seclusion of a seaside town to evade a murder plot. But on both occasions, it seems that Jesus' motivation was not His reputation or His safety but His mission. As Paul put it in Romans 15:3: 'For Christ did not please himself...' 1 Corinthians 13 is therefore crucial to understanding Paul's imitation of Jesus, his whole approach to life.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away… So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

This is the quality of love that drew Jesus out of heaven to Bethlehem and it is the glory of the Christmas message. Without developing that kind of love, Paul could never have trusted God as he did. Without it, he would have been so shackled by disappointment and bitterness; without it, he could never have lived in the freedom that Jesus won for him on the cross. And neither can we. We need to be inspired by the love of Jesus just as Paul was inspired if we are to enjoy the freedom he enjoyed!

'Therefore...' writes Paul in the passage at the start of this Reflection. 'Therefore...' As a result, as a consequence of... 'God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'

I realise this next statement is theologically suspect but I hope you see what I mean. Paul makes it sound as if that as Jesus followed the downward path from Bethlehem to Calvary, His Father did for Him more than He would do for Himself. That's the challenge of contentment for us also.

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014.

What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Sustainability and Transcendence in Business

I've circulated this extra post to let you know that I've published a book on Amazon for Kindle called, Sustainability and Transcendence in Business.

It’s a short book (13,000 words) to help businesspeople (and everyone else) transcend the influence of money and serve their communities. It distinguishes capitalism from free trade generally, to explain how businesses should offer worthwhile goods and services and not be driven by the profit motive towards manipulating markets and manufacturing popular desire and addiction for anything that will sell. Based on the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, three issues from the Sermon on the Mount key to business are considered: integrity, relationships and society.

Some of you will know that I've spent much of this year collating my financial capability teaching into a book but this isn't that book. I thought that I'd nearly finished that book last week but then, as I re-read a draft I planned to circulate to friends for comment, I realised that the chapter on coveting was inadequate and had to be re-written. I then felt the need to lay the draft aside until after Christmas.

The book I've now published is a revision of one I produced for All Souls Church 18 months ago, as part of the Money-Ed personal financial education project that I ran from All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church. As it's intended as an evangelistic book for a different primary audience to the book I'm still working on, I thought that people might find it helpful. It also gave me some useful practical experience of publishing for Kindle.

I wanted to make Sustainable and Transcendence in Business available as a free book but discovered this is not an easy thing to do. I therefore priced it at the lowest possible price, which is US $0.99. It should therefore be available around the world at less than £1 or €1.

I will gladly send to anyone who wants it a free PDF version of the book and copies of the illustrations I used. I will also explore publishing the book on other platforms.

I would be very happy for people to adopt any of the material in the book for their own use, as long as they don't misrepresent my own views.

If you are able to, please purchase the Kindle book and then feel free to rank it (up to 5 stars) and leave an honest review. I would also appreciate feedback, especially if you think that I've misunderstood any of the Bible passages mentioned.

Philip Evans

CONTENTMENT (10): Paul's Mistakes

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.

Philippians 1:27-28

It’s hard to learn contentment in the midst of difficult, unjust situations but how much more of a challenge is it when we’ve been the author of our own misfortune?

I think St Paul may have made three mistakes that led to his deportation to Rome. But decide for yourself. First, when he decided to visit Jerusalem, he wanted to complete the journey in time for Pentecost. For Jews, Pentecost celebrated when God gave Moses the Torah, the teaching on how to live; for Christians, it was the anniversary of when God poured out his Holy Spirit on the Church. It was therefore an especially important occasion for the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem who were Paul's fiercest critics because they continued to live by the Torah. Was Paul just asking for trouble by going at that time?

When Paul shared news of his plan with the elders of the church at Ephesus, he explained, ‘I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me’. (See Acts 20:22-23). That sounds daunting, even if Paul really was correct to think that he was ‘constrained by the Spirit’ to go!

When Paul arrived at Tyre, Christians speaking ‘through the Spirit’ warned him against continuing to Jerusalem. Later, when he stayed at Caesarea, a prophet called Agabus arrived with God’s warning not to continue on to Jerusalem. To illustrate the warning, Agabus took Paul’s belt and tied his own hands and feet. ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit’, he said, ‘This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’ (See Acts 21:8-14).

Was Paul wrong to go to Jerusalem? I don’t know but he seems to have gone contrary to many warnings and in a similar situation today I think that many Christians would probably conclude that he was wrong.

When Paul arrived at Jerusalem, he took the church leader's advice and tried to placate the Jewish Christians by undergoing a week-long ritual purification ceremony. I can see why St Paul thought this was the right thing to do but the strategy failed tragically. While Paul was in the Temple, some Jews visiting from Asia misunderstood what he was doing and triggered a riot. A troop of Roman soldiers had to rescue Paul from being lynched.

Some people think that what Agabus had prophesied did not come true, not exactly. Rather than the Jews bind Paul and hand him over to the Romans, it was Roman soldiers who rescued him from the Jewish mob. I think, however, that the Jews who tied Paul’s hands and feet – who bound him – were the Jewish Christians he was trying to please, not the Jewish mob.

While Paul was in prison at Caesarea, the new Governor, Festus, wanting to ‘do the Jews a favour’ proposed sending Paul back to Jerusalem for trial there. Certain that he would not get justice but only death, Paul exercised his right as a Roman citizen to be tried before Caesar. Was this another mistake?

Before Paul could be sent to Rome, he had another opportunity to put his case when King Agrippa and Queen Bernice arrived to pay their respects to the new Governor. At the end of that hearing, Agrippa said to Festus, ‘This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar’. I’m sure that must have given Paul pause for thought.

Was Paul wrong in these situations? I don't know but we all suffer from these sorts of doubts from time to time. Having made the best decisions we knew how in the circumstances, we later wonder if God had something better planned if we’d acted differently or done nothing at all. But the assurance we get from Scripture is that God can redeem whatever mess we get ourselves into.

This is not a licence to be careless or to sin! There may be consequences to our words and actions that we have to live with but, as Paul wrote in Romans 8, 'We know that for those who love God all things work together for good...' All things must necessarily include our own mistakes. Paul added, that, 'nothing in all creations will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord'. Nothing! Nothing at all. Not even our own mistakes can come between God and us. Therefore, like Paul, we can be content that what happens, even when we've got it wrong, will work out for our ultimate good!

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014.

What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

CONTENTMENT (9): Paul's Salvation

I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all…

 Philippians 1: 18-25

‘For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.’ Choose? Why did Paul think that he had the choice whether to live or to die?

I take it for granted that Paul was not considering suicide! He could have been under a death sentence with the option of remitting it by renouncing what he believed and taught but that does not seem likely or something that would appeal to Paul. God might have given Paul the choice whether to continue to endure imprisonment or to step from a dungeon straight into Glory! But I think there is a more normal explanation. The original Greek word for 'choose' can also be translated ‘prefer’, so I think Paul was saying only that he couldn’t tell whether to prefer life or death? But even that raises important issues for us. How would we choose? Which do we prefer? If God offered us the opportunity to die in the next few minutes, would we pray earnestly for a longer life or be in two minds like Paul?

Paul faced the choice from a position of love. Was he to love himself or others? ‘My desire is to depart and be with Christ...but to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.’ He went beyond Jesus’ command to love our neighbours as ourselves: he loved his neighbours more than he loved himself and on that basis preferred life.

One all-consuming lifestyle goal motivated Paul, as he explained later in the letter. To ‘gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead’.

The suffering Paul experienced was necessary for Paul to reach his goal. It wasn't  an artificial suffering, self-inflicted as some sort of religious discipline, but an inevitable consequence of his mission for Jesus. By such suffering, evil was turned to good and the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus, spread across the Roman Empire and beyond. By that suffering, we have Paul's letters to read today!

Hardship, illness, disability, abuse and other terrible things are not good in and of themselves but can be turned to good, setting in motion things that are very good - just as Christ's crucifixion did! We reflected on this in the past few weekends.

Paul’s attitude to death was integral to his Christian faith. Too often, it seems to me, Christians fail to shake off the sense of despair and tragedy that society in general attaches to death. An acute sense of loss is natural but it should sit alongside the enduring hope of eternal life. I recall a retired pastor who has since died himself telling me what happened in the moments after his wife died. A nurse said to him, ‘I’m sorry for your loss’. He replied, ‘Oh no, I haven’t lost her. I know exactly where she is. I just can’t be with her for the time being.’ Although there was no doubt that the loss of his wife of over 50 years had a physical impact on the pastor, there was no shadow across his faith because he shared St Paul’s conviction.

The word translated ‘deliverance’ in the opening line of the quotation at the start of this Reflection is the same word translated ‘salvation’ elsewhere in the letter. I understand why the translators have used ‘deliverance’ because it refers to a future phase of salvation. The New Testament writers do not describe salvation as something they obtained in the past but as an ongoing process with future consummation after death.

This is why Paul wrote to the Philippians, ‘Work out your own salvation...’ (Philippians 2:12-13). He didn't mean for them or for us to make it up for ourselves but to see through what God had ordained, just as he was seeing it through. Paul was content to suffer hardship, abuse and death - a death that would probably be as torturous as a Roman crucifixion. He looked on it all as 'gain'! We too can know that quality of contentment!

© Copyright Philip Evans 2014.

What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.