Advent is Not Christmas – and it’s a Good Thing Too! (2)
Advent Begins in the Dark with God (Year
C, 2nd Sunday 2018)
Advent begins in
the dark. So we have seen. But that does not mean we are without hope, people
like us sunk in the darkness. That too we have also seen. However useless,
hopeless, full of ourselves, accomplished, middlingly moral, maddeningly
scrupulous, or ethically destitute we may think ourselves to be, and may
actually be, whatever the flavor of our darkness, none of that finally matters.
None of it
Because Advent
is not about us! Not about us.
-Not
about our feeling good or bad about our lives.
-Nor
about our moral improvement.
-Nor
even preparing ourselves for Christmas (as our culture (mis)understands it).
It’s about the
darkness that enshrouds us. And God.
-That darkness that
cannot “endure the day of hi coming” (Mal.3:2).
-That darkness which
requires our “refining” to escape (Mal.3:2-3).
-That
darkness cast by the political shenanigans, ambitions, and realpolitik of Emperor
Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, his brother Philip, during the high priesthood
of Annas and Caiaphas.(Lk.3:1ff.).
Into that darkness, personal and public, God “suddenly” (Mal.3:1)
shows up! Neither expected nor, in truth, wanted, God turns up with an agenda.
Malachi names that divine agenda as “refining” (Mal.3:3). Do you know what that
process entailed? An alloyed mixture of materials is put into a furnace at a
low temperature. The heat at that level causes the impurities nearest the
surface of the mass to bubble off where they can be scraped off. That done, the
mass is reinserted in the furnace and the heat is increased. More impurities
bubble up. The process is repeated again and again till only the precious metal
is left and, thus, purified. That’s what God’s coming to do to his people.
This means, friends, that though Advent begins in darkness it is
not dominated by darkness. Ultimately, Advent is about God! And his pursuit of
us on the way to fulfilling his purposes for us and our world. Implacably
relentless God pursues us with the “violence of love” (Oscar Romero) which is
strong as death and fierce as the grave (Song Sol 8:6) outlasting and defeating
them for us.
This is a real crucible, though. That’s why Fleming Rutledge
claims that Advent is not for sissies (Advent:
790). Remember the refining process described above. As Advent’s God contests
the darkness in us and the world around us courage, hope, and not a little
chutzpah are required. Advent means change. And change always hurts in the
process if not the result. For Israel the Advent or coming of God precipitated
the last great crisis of its history. They wrestled with Jesus’ call to come to
him and become the Israel God always intended her to be and avoid the
wrong-headed rush to war with Rome they presently pursued. And he told them
this was their last chance to become that Abrahamic Israel (Gen.12:1-3)! That
was what was at stake for them.
Not dissimilarly, Jesus comes to us in Advent offering us the
chance to become that same people of Abraham this side of the cross. The
mandate to bear God’s blessing to the world is ours as well, now that blessing
realized through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The church
too stands in the wake of this last great crisis of human history, even today
at the end of 2018. We know our darkness, or at least we should. Perhaps none
have limned it better than the poet Mary Oliver in her poem “Of the Empire.”
We will be known
as a culture that feared death
and
adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will
be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of
things, that
spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people
(other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity.
And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they
will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart,
and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
(Red Bird: Poems (p. 46). Beacon Press.
Kindle Edition)
God will be
found in this darkness for us. Doing his refining work. We who follow Jesus
make ourselves available for refining – this is faith, Advent faith. That means
foreswearing our various dalliances and loyalties to other powers and peoples.
Our mantra for enduring this refining process is this wonderful statement from A Declaration of Faith (Presbyterian Church
USA):
We declare that
Jesus is Lord.
His resurrection
is the decisive victory
over the powers that deform and destroy human life.
His lordship is
hidden.
The world
appears to be dominated by people and systems
that do not acknowledge his rule.
But his lordship
is real.
It demands our
loyalty and sets us free from
the fear of all lesser lords who threaten us.
We maintain that
ultimate sovereignty now belongs to
Jesus Christ in
every sphere of life.
Jesus is Lord!
He has been Lord
from the beginning.
He will be Lord
at the end.
Even now he is
Lord! (Ch. 4, lines 135-150)
Advent observed
in such a faith resists “sissification” (or as we call it “spiritualization”). You
see, Advent is not in its first moments about the baby Jesus, even in anticipation.
It’s about God, his plans for this world, the darkness shrouding and confounding
that purpose, God’s relentless unwillingness to acquiesce in such dysfunction,
and his call to his people to put on their “big kid” clothes and submit to
divine refinement and the world’s transformation.
And that’s where
Paul’s prayer for the Philippian church comes in. He prays that God grow their
love to the point where it can “help you to determine what is best”
(Phil.1:10). Discernment is a chief way, perhaps the chief way, we survive, and
even thrive, as we make our way through the darkness. Darkness needs light to
make a way through it. This way is not obvious or self-evident. But it is there
and God’s gift of love reveals that way. Meeting God in the darkness of Advent means
finding out way through it though such is neither easy or quick.
This second post
in Advent takes us through the darkness. Not around it or over it as of we
could somehow avoid it, but through its horrible, gritty, reality. Making our
way through this darkness, we discover God is already present there! His
presence there is a
-promise
– a word of hope,
-path
– a way through the darkness, and
-potency
– power to prevail.
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