Advent 1C
28 Nov 2021
In the Episcopal Church we know how to do Advent! No sign of a creche; no Christmas decorations, and (heaven forbid) no Christmas Carols until Christmas Eve. I was shopping for something last weekend and heard holiday music over the speaker. I secretly look around for some sort of weapon to destroy the speaker. Ugh.
Instead we spent four weeks in anticipation and wonder. This was, at one point, a penitential season. I think that misses the greater wonder of Advent. I would suggest we ponder the intrinsic goodness of creation and of humanity. This necessitates understanding in what ways we have fallen short of that innate goodness, but it makes clear that we are NOT dealing with innate “badness.”
Religions all have their spin on creation and humanity. For the most part, indigenous religions do not denigrate creation, but rather emphasis the powerful connections between humans the natural world. If we look to the beliefs and practices of our own indigenous peoples, we find antidotes to sin and evil. Learn to live in your own skin, to respect the earth in which you live, and understand you are one of a tribe or family. Hindus stress order and place and, while acknowledging one’s deeds determine one’s destiny, they do not view creation as in any way evil nor humans as inherently bad. Humans are responsible, not evil. Nor do Buddhism and Jainism regard creation and humanity as evil; evil is chosen, not predestined. Sikhs would not recognize original sin (born in sin); in fact I don’ t think Jesus would either. Even Zoroastrians, with their belief in dualism, think evil deeds are a choice one makes.
Somehow Christianity over its two millennia of existence has developed an almost single-minded fascination with human sinfulness as the starting point. It is though we are doomed from the very beginning of our existence. Born into sin and in need of constant supervision and correction from outside forces aka The Church. Fear about the afterlife dominates the conversation, more so than fear about the very real threats of our earthly existence. Then Advent becomes nothing more than a time to think upon our personal evils and misadventures and look forward to Christmas when the author of our salvation is born.
But what if, just what if, we have it wrong? As Christians we hear the passage from Jeremiah and assume it is all about Jesus, Jesus come to save us from our sins. It is so much more than that!! Jeremiah saw the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. It is God’s promise to a people in despair, not because they were born in sin and were hopelessly destined for hell but because of the sin of turning from God has, in his interpretation, led to the sacking of Jerusalem and of their exile. Great despair and utter hopelessness and helplessness. God brings promise! This is not the message of our utter depravity, from which only a personal confession of Jesus as lord and savior spares us from eternal damnation. This is a message of God’s love, even to a people who turned from him. Ultimately Jesus is what God looks like with a human face. God’s promise is for justice!
Advent is not about what God will do in spite of us or about waiting to be saved, but about what God will do through us and within us to save the world. (Pulpit Fiction, Advent 1C)
God is coming to us this Advent, and every Advent, while we dwell in a land of broken dreams, hopes dashed, and the landscape littered with broken shards of hate. As in Narnia, it is winter but never Christmas.
I understand the need for Blue Christmas services. The so called most happy time of the year is all but that for so many people. Jeremiah would approve. He would know how to acknowledge our fears and our sadness for he came from such a place. He understood, as does God, that people commit evil deeds, they sin, but that even more so they, we, are broken. We are broken by our own wrongdoings, of course, but also by all the evil that exists around us. We need to lament. Advent is here to remind us of the mystery in the Eucharist: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
Every year we preach and teach and celebrate in our liturgy that great mystery. At no time is it more in evidence than Advent, when we try to comprehend the incomprehensible: we are waiting for a baby to be born who was born so long ago and is always waiting to be born yet again inside of us.
So how do we know what Luke means? These are words that could easily frighten one. End times; repent!! God is coming like a destroyer angel.
Religion often is like a business with a good ad agency: we convince people they are disordered, sinful, from the git go and that we religious people have the solution to sell to you. In the Middle Ages, that became literally true!
Advent is that time that should turn us, like that old Shaker him, around until we come out right. Luke is not talking about the Grapes of Wrath here; Luke is offering hope: the realm of God is at hand. This is a realm of the present, this is God’s glorious reign for the here and now.
I am sad when religion offers a set of beliefs as an antidote to non-existent human depravity, when people decide they have the answers, and those answers are only available within the framework of the Church of the Holy Bucket. The Episcopal Church certainly has its own history of believing in its own perfection.
I don’t have many answers, mostly questions. But I do know this: God came somehow as a human one not because we were eternally and hopelessly evil, but because we weren’t. We do evil; we hurt others and all of creation. It does not mean we ARE evil.
Advent is all about hope and the first Sunday in Advent is just that: the Sunday of Hope.
Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent: one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.
(Letter from Bonhoeffer at Tegel prison to Eberhard Bethge, November 21, 1943)
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