Thursday, December 7 - Is Not He Too a Servant, and is Not He Forgot?

Malcolm Guite, in his anthology of poems for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, selects lines from The Ballad of the White Horse, by G.K. Chesterton, a British journalist from the early 20th century.  Chesterton once decided to write an epic poem about Alfred the Great, the British king who lived in the 800s A.D.  Many legendary tales depict Alfred's defeat of the Vikings, and of his Christian unification of England.  One of these tales has to do with the king when he is a fugitive, anonymous, and no doubt looking too shabby to be recognized to be King Alfred.  He comes to a fire where a woman is preparing cakes.  She takes him for 'a beggar, such as lags looking for crusts and ale'.  With pity, she invites him to serve her by keeping an eye on the fire, saying 'there is a cake for any man if he will watch the fire."

By himself, King Alfred ponders that he has become the least of serving men, then suddenly realizes that this is what God has done as well.  Here is the excerpt from Book IV in Chesterton's poem that Guite includes in his book, Waiting for the Word, and it is King Alfred who is speaking:

And well may God with the serving-folk
Cast in His dreadful lot;
Is not He too a servant,
And is not He forgot?

For was not God my gardener
And silent like a slave;
That opened oaks on the uplands
Or thicket in graveyard gave?

And was not God my armourer,
All patient and unpaid,
That sealed my skull as a helmet,
And ribs for hauberk made?

Did not a great grey servant
Of all my sires and me,
Build this pavilion of the pines,
And herd the fowls and fill the vines,
And labour and pass and leave no signs
Save mercy and mystery?

For God is a great servant,
And rose before the day,
From some primordial slumber torn;
But all we living later born
Sleep on, and rise after the morn,
And the Lord has gone away.

On things half sprung from sleeping,
All sleeping suns have shone,
They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,
The beasts blink upon hands and knees,
Man is awake and does and sees - 
But Heaven has done and gone.

For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save in faint figures and failing words,
Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,
Labours, and is at rest?

But some see God like Guthrum,
Crowned, with a great beard curled,
But I see God like a good giant,
That, labouring, lifts the world.

Guite takes note that the key verse from the start of this excerpt is this one about God: "is not He too a servant, and is not He forgot?"  From there, the first four stanzas are about God appearing by turns as a gardener, an armourer, a herder for fowls, and worker among the vines.  Servants, constantly tending, yet unthanked and anonymous.  Later, Guite draws our thoughts helpfully to those who serve:

"Chesterton, was of course, writing when not only the upper class but most English middle-class families had servants.  Most of his readers were people who awoke to fires that were already lit, rooms already swept, tables already laid.  But, unlike many of his contemporary writers, Chesterton also numbered among his readers some of the servants who had to get up early to light these fires and sweep these rooms and lay these tables..." (27)

Then, Guite draws our thoughts to those who serve in our own day:

"Most of us could no longer be accused of taking our servants for granted, but this poem still gives us a double challenge.  The ones who serve us, who prepare our ready-meals, sew our clothes, light our fires - not by kneeling on our own hearths but by drilling and toiling in danger for the oil we burn, or working all day in factories and packing plants - these people are even more ignored and unthanked than the domestic servants of Edwardian Britain.  For we have outsourced their labour, that we might keep them at a convenient distance, and so not be confronted by their humanity.  As we begin, through Advent, to make the many purchases that seem to be a necessary prelude to Christmas, it may be that this poem will prompt us to remember to give thanks and to pray for the 'great grey servant(s)' who have put these goods in our hands." (27-28)

Perhaps it is fair to ask: how many degrees of separation are there between us and the ones who grow the food we eat during this season, or the gifts we purchase?  How hidden from us are these hidden servants, and how easily forgotten?  And then perhaps Chesterton might ask us again of God as he comes to us in Jesus Christ: is not he too a servant, and is not he forgot?

One final thing: the "Guthrum" of the final stanza refers to the pagan Viking king in opposition to Alfred.  Guthrum is described here merely as a typical picture of human authority: the well-manicured, crowned king far removed from the peasantry.  By way of contrast, a god like Guthrum is seated atop the world, in a grand tower of Babel, whereas Alfred's image of God is undergirding the world in a quiet and loving way.  One more contrast might be made.  Guthrum's god is dour, while Alfred's is merry.  Guthrum avoids the thought that there is nothing beyond this world by killing: "Wherefore I am a great king, and waste the world in vain, because man hath not other power, save that in dealing death for dower." (Ralph Wood, Chesterton, 164)  Contrast Guthrum's words with these words from Alfred, in which he describes how the Incarnation reorders all customs and calendars:

The giant laughter of Christian men
that roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
the farmer with all his flails;

Tales that tumble and tales that trick
Yet end not all in scorning -
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock's gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.

In other words, the Christmas story, that God really did become a human, creates a new sort of deep, resilient, comedy, quite distinct from Guthrum's tragic outlook.  The comedy of Christmas 'roars' through a thousand silly, earthy tales, the stories of our lives, and far from pulling the rug out from under them, undergirds them like Alfred's good giant, and those stories we tell and the stories we live find their way back into the story of Christmas: "that the mummers sing upon Christmas night and Christmas Day in the morning."  Stories like that of the woman making cakes by the fire.  In the same way that she was never very far away from King Alfred, neither are we very far from the Son of God - the forgotten, yet present, always labouring, under-girding, serving King and Lord Jesus Christ.