An Advent Credo (courtesy of Daniel Berrigan?)

I found the following while doing an annual tidy up: I have no idea where I got it from, or the accuracy of the attribution to Daniel Berrigan. It seems appropriate as an affirmation for Advent, so here it is.

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss ...
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life;


It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction ...
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.


It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever ...
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful, councillor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.


It is not true that we are simply victims off the powers of evil who seek to rule the world ...
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even unto the end of the world.


It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers ...
This is true: I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.


It is not rue that our hopes for liberation of mankind, of justice, of human dignity, of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history ...
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that true worshippers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.


So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ - the life of the world.

Have churches in Australia "got over "christendom?

You would not want to conduct a prosecution on the basis of media reports, even if the report did appear in such a sober paper as The Canberra Times. Well more sober than say, The Daily Telegraph, or The Herald-Sun. However, the report on Christmas messages from church leaders, buried on P.9, of the December 17 edition, under the heading "Churches address contentious issues", rises some interesting questions of some theological significance about how churches place, or perhaps better, imagine themselves in addressing  Australian society, in a time after Christendom.


My suggestion is that the church in Australia has not yet really "gotten over" Christendom and is still assuming a location in society that gives it a particular position of power and responsibility for sustaining the social order. The news report gets to the heart of the issue with the observation of one church leader that "... rather than legislating morality the Church could help to unite society" and is followed by the comment that ...the gift of the Church is ... being the voice of Christ, especially to those who feel alienated from or dispossessed of the gifts that this nation has.


The comment about the Church "uniting society" betrays a lingering Christendom mentality in which the church and state are still linked together to uphold the social order, even if the church does not wish to proceed by way of legislation in achieving its goals. While it is one step away from the original Christendom arrangement, the next part of the statement assumes that there is still an important degree of linkage between church and state and that the church will play a "conserving" role in society as a chaplain to support the social order as it is. The observation about the Church being the voice of Christ "to" the alienated, assumes that the Church is in a position of power and can speak from that position "to" those who are on the margins as an upholder of social order and a source of "values", a term that usually remains curiously undefined. Everyone is in favour of "values", aren't they?


Unfortunately, the church leaders who were responsible for producing these statements have not, in my view anyway, being paying enough attention to the readings for the third Sunday in Advent. These readings are particularly unsettling to any presumption that the God that the prophets of Israel presumed to speak for can be easily corralled into support of  asocial and economic order in which it is business as usual. If God is in favour of "values" then they are very specific and disturbing values, not likely to be enthusiastically embraced by those entrenched in positions of authority. and power.


The readings from Luke and Isaiah caste into severe doubt the presumption that God is interested in upholding the social order as it is. Indeed they suggest that  those who wish to align themselves with God's activity will be unlikely to be found acting as chaplains to a society devoted to consumerism in its early twenty-first century manifestations.


Take the reading from the prophet Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion-- to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 

For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed. I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. (Isaiah 61: 1-4, 8-11)

That doesn't sound a lot like a recipe for maintaining the social order and business as usual to me, while the declaration by Mary, recorded in Luke's Gospel is positively rabble rousing in its political and social implications:

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. (Luke 1: 46b-55)

Yes I know these passages are read in the churches, but the problem is that they are read by the those of us who are in positions of relative social and political power, and economic and social comfort. We carry the assumptions a hangover from Christendom about the social location of the church and its responsibility for maintaing social order. As a consequence we remain largely oblivious to the way that our location in the comfort of middle class Australia obscures the radical and disturbing call of the passages. 

The voice of the churches in Australia will only start to take on the disturbing character of the prophets and Mary in addressing the world around us when they can begin to imagine themselves as being "other" than the chaplain to the state, and without the perceived responsibility for maintaining the social order and thereby supporting business as usual. When the churches can recover their identity as witnesses to the upside-down disturbing kingdom that Jesus came to announce and inaugurate, then they might begin to speak not "to", or even "for" those who are on the margins, but "from" the margins, as a community that has begun to practice justice, and depends for its life upon the faithfulness of a merciful, remembering God, not the support of the state and alignment with the "powers that be".

Blogging Through Advent - 4th Sunday

Readings Advent 4 (Year A)


Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

The readings for this Sunday in Advent, particularly the passages from Isaiah and Matthew need to be read in the wider context. The full force of the connections aren't fully obvious. Terms like Emmanuel, God with Us, are hard to read through the lenses that we have inherited from the experence of Christendom in which monarchy came to be equated with arbitrary power. what we need to anticipate and open ourselves to is that in this week in Advent our expectations will be turned upside down.

Walter Brueggeman, the Old Testament traces this turning of our expectations upside down in his compact reflection on the readings for this Sunday.

The two central texts, the gospel narrative of Matthew and the Isaiah text to which Matthew alludes, speak about the biology of this evangelical event. The biology does not leave much to argue about. Let us say simply and at the outset, "Yes, born of a virgin." And we say that in the innocence of Christmas without quibbling over translation problems of which something likely could be made. We simply follow the creedal way of the church and leave these niceties undisturbed.

But the biological event does not stand as a bald medical claim. In the context of Isaiah 7:10-15, the birth of the unnamed child points us to two other considerations.
First, the child is given to King Ahaz as a notice that the present world should not be feared, trusted, or credited. The virgin birth is a sign that the known world, the one we treasure, is not permanent. It is in jeopardy, under assault by the power of God, and it will soon be terminated.

The scholarly inclination is that the years before the "knowing good and evil" are to be reckoned at two years. That is how long it takes a child to learn. So this odd birth is a time bomb. In two years, O king, the landscape of the human world will have completely changed. It is not to be treasured or relied upon.

The season of Advent invites us to imagine what in the landscape of this world will change in two years because God is God. What threats will dissipate? What evil will be overcome? What chances for obedience will be take—or missed? And if we take Isaiah 7:17 seriously, under what threats will we be in two years?

The whole passage reminds us that the present world is not locked into a safe or predictable mode. It is open and on the move, precisely because Yahweh is Lord. We must not be so fascinated with the biological as to miss the news that is here, good and bad.
Second, the name of the child, like so many names, is an anticipation: Immanuel—God with us! That is the evangelical claim of the biological event. Immanuel could be royal propaganda, a throne name. Or it could mean the most important new reality ever made available in creation.

The God who has been far off draws close. The one who is enemy and judge becomes comrade and friend. The calculus of heaven and earth is changed, and earth becomes the place of God's governing presence. This is cause for celebration.

In the epistle lesson, Paul begins with reference to the same gospel (Romans 1:1). It is far from clear that Paul knows anything about virgin birth. If he does, he makes nothing of it. But he does know about and makes a great deal of the odd reality of Jesus. He uses a barrage of titular terms to try to express it. What all the listing of names and the celebration of Jesus yields for Paul is a call to be set apart for the gospel, a call to obedience and apostleship (verses 1,5).

Advent and the birth are not events that happen and just sit there. They are events with futures. They open new lives and establish fresh vocations. They call baptized folks to live lives as odd, abrasive, and unacceptable to reason as any biological miracles. A World on the Move

Yes, the world is not safe or predictable, as we have had reason to be reminded this week with the shipwreck and drowning of refugees within sight of, note the irony of the title of the geographic feature, Christmas Island.

The passage from Isaiah comes at a time of empires clashing, people being uprooted and dispersed. The promise recorded in the encounter between Isaiah and the king is a ticking time bomb for those in power trying to play it safe. An openness to the future of God's salvation is paradoxically risky and uncertain, played out in the reality of women giving birth and empires on the march.

I find no easy comfort here in these readings. It does not offer salvation as something spiritual disconnected from the world of politics and the wonder of the birth of a child. It offers to us a way in which salvation has to be lived, not an intellectually constructed creed to be believed.
 

Blogging Through Advent - 3rd Sunday

Third Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146: 5-10 or Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

Debra Dean Murphy in her reflections on this weeks readings for Advent draws our attention sharply  to the outdoor character of what we are waiting for in Advent. Here is no vague Aldi brand spirituality that we can briefly tune into as a form of therapy before resuming business as normal in the frantic rush to consume.

Wendell Berry observes that it’s not enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. For many, such an insight serves mainly to underwrite the idea that we can worship God best in nature’s environs: mountaintops, seashores, golf courses. But I think that Berry is on to something else, as are the appointed texts for the season of Advent generally and for the third Sunday especially.

The Advent scriptures are relentlessly eschatological: preoccupied with consummation and completion, concerned with all things, at long last, being set to right. ...

Even more of a challenge, perhaps, is the particular vision of Advent’s eschaton: transformed landscapes (blooming deserts, water in the wilderness); the glory and majesty of forests and mountains (Lebanon, Carmel, Sharon). Eschatology here is topographical, earthy, local. It is, at heart, about the renewal of creation. Christ’s second Advent portends not the sweeping of souls up into the clouds but heaven come to earth. It’s land reform, people.

But it’s people reform, too: blind eyes opened, deafness cured, lepers healed, the dead raised. It is justice executed: food for the hungry, prisoners set free, the rich sent away empty. It is good news, at long last, for the poor. (Advent Outdoors)

The richness of the good news that surfaces in the readings for Advent is revolutionary in the deepest sense of that term. Walter Brueggemann advises us that:

The news is that big change is coming. Mary sings (in Luke) her revolutionary song about the reversal of social arrangements and Isaiah offers a poem about homecoming for the alienated. Advent is about pondering the big changes that are set in motion by Christmas.

In the narrative about Jesus in Matthew 11, John the Baptizer wonders whether Jesus is the long expected Messiah. Jesus urges John to consider the “facts on the ground,” which are the consequences of Jesus’ effective ministry. The list of beneficiaries of that ministry is not unlike that in Psalm 146. The list includes the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor (Matthew 11:5), that is, all the devalued and marginalized.. In the psalm “the Lord” does the work. In the narrative, Jesus does the work. Ergo … yes, Jesus is the Messiah. Yes, Jesus is the one expected and welcomed. It is no wonder that Mary sang her revolutionary song: the birth and ministry of Jesus constitute a social revolution that keeps reverberating through every time and place. (The Jesus Revolution)

How do we wait for such a revolution? We are in this for the long haul as the reading from James reminds us.  We wait patiently for the rain, we can't rush it, we can't live without it and sometimes it comes down not as the Palestinian farmers knew it in regular quantities and at regular times, but as we have experienced it in Canberra this week unexpectedly and with a force that reminds us we are not in control.

What does patience mean in a time of speed, where speed translates increasingly into violence against the world, animals and people, psychologically and physically. Note the kangaroos killed on the road, the people who lose family members in the road toll, those people who are notable to keep up with technology which places more and more demands on us to fit in with the drive to efficiency and has little pity for those who cannot accommodate themselves to its demands.

The ultimate in speed is war in which we refuse to take the time to converse with our enemy and assume that only the speed of violence can bring about change and justice. Patience begins with James reminds us not complaining against one another. Taking the time to listen. Patience is non-violence as a practice which trusts that we have all the time we need to be changed by our neighbour and by God so that we might be able to recognise and respond with joy to the changes that Advent is announcing when they actually arrive.

 

Blogging through Advent - 2nd Sunday

Advent 2 (Year A) 
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
 
The readings for Advent seem to bring out the best in the compilers of the lectionary. The readings hang together, the connections are not forced and we find ourselves confronted with themes that run deep in the tradition. We sense and are given theological and narrative warrants for the connections between Isaiah, Jesus and the prophet John.

The passage in Romans shows Paul at his most Jewish, writing as a Jew about the inclusion of the pagans in mutual care in the new community that God is bringing into being. Doug Lee in the meditation on the these readings on the Ekklesia Project Blog draws out the political implications of these readings in his critique of the limits of a liberal polity. Paul in his reference to Isaiah declares that the ancient promise is on the way to fulfilment.

The day of hope has come, for Jesse’s root has risen to rule the Gentiles (Romans 15:12). While Isaiah sees only the eventual emergence of the coming king (“he shall stand”), the Greek translation cited by Paul signals something far more startling. It employs the word regularly utilized for “resurrection” and thus ignites Paul’s proclamation that Christ’s rising from the dead actualizes apocalyptic day of hope. “The Lord of our longing has conquered the night,” declares the lyrics of the Catholic hymn City of God. God has fulfilled the longing of Israel and the nations, and so Paul proclaims Christ as Lord of the nations to those who live under the nose of that Roman pretender, Caesar.

But this is far from revolutionary ideology or political theory. For Paul, all politics is local.

Therefore, the politics of hope begin at home, in the church, and around the table. The weak and the strong shall sit together at table and not devour each other with their condescension and condemnation. They can now eat together without qualms about each other’s dietary restrictions or voting affiliations.

Under Caesar and American liberalism, the best humanity can hope for is to maintain a sham unity enforced by power. When we bump up against intractable differences, the most we can practice is a tolerance that allows us to coexist but at a safe distance from one another. “Peace” is won through enforced division.

But under the reign of the coming king, the people of God are liberated from merely tolerating each other, from practicing that forced cordiality that plagues too many of our relationships in the church, and from mouthing that nonsense that we are all the same on the inside.

Christ did not die for generic people; he died as a servant of the circumcised and to fulfill God’s promises to the Hebrew people. Christ did not live at a safe distance from others so that everyone could go on pleasing themselves; he denied himself so that the Gentiles might be grafted and join a redeemed Israel in praising God with one voice. Therefore, we welcome one another as Christ has welcomed us. We see that we could never be whole without each other, even in—and because of—our differences. We disturb the powers, liberal and imperial, when people who have no business eating together share one table. Our little welcomes are deeply interpersonal and vastly public, political, and apocalyptic at the same time. Paul’s politics of hope is practiced in the near and now. The Power of Hope : American and Apocalyptic

More particularly according to the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, the Advent readings announce the end of the world as we know it, not through some spiritual experience detached from the world that we live in, but in practices of hope living towards justice in that very same world. A generic spirituality just doesn't cut it in the Scripture readings for Advent. The account of the readings that he offers us challenges much about what we thought being a Christian was all about. If we are not uncomfortable with the status quo and its distribution of power and wealth then it may be doubtful whether we have begun to grasp, or be grasped by the message of Advent.

In the epistle reading, Paul writes of God's truthfulness, by which he means reliability. God does what God says, that is, keeps God's word. This same God is described as the "God of hope", (verse 13). God's truth is about God's resolve to transform our world, to make it utterly new. That is why Gentiles may rejoice, praise, and hope (verses 9-12). And we believers, out of that promise, are invited to joy, peace, and power (verse 13).

So we ask, what is the promise? As the lectionary is arranged, we are bound to say the governing promise is the coming of a new leader, of the line of David. Both Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 articulate a new leader who will be empowered by the Spirit (Isaiah 11:2), who will have great dominion and much prosperity (Psalm 72: 8-11, 16). The common element in these two poetic forays is that the new governor will attend to the well-being, equity, and worth of the poor, marginalized, and disenfranchised: "May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy and crush the oppressor" (Psalm 72:4). Also, "With righteousness he will judge the poor, and decide with equity for the poor of the earth" (Isaiah 11:4).

... the pivotal point is the transformed situation of the poor. That is what the coming governor will do.

Note that the promise is not social evolution or developmental improvement. It is rather the inversion of the present in which the devalued will become the properly valued. So the promise is, at the same time, an enormous hope and a heavy judgment on how things now are. The function of the promise is to make the present provisional and tentative, even while we tend to make it absolute and treat it as an eternal arrangement.

In Matthew 3:1-12 the promised sovereign now draws near in the words of John the Baptist. Matthew uses the language of Isaiah 40:3 to envision a homecoming of the new king in triumphant procession. John calls for repentance (verse 2), which means ending old loyalties for the embrace of the new regime.

Jesus did indeed come to do exactly what Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 had promised. He came to cause inversion, to displace the old marginalizing arrangement. He summoned people to abandon the old patterns for God's new truthfulness.

It does not surprise us that John has conflict with the ones who value the present arrangement (verse 7). The establishment figures do not understand that this coming of the new king means the end of privilege and priority. They trivialize the baptism of Advent as a religious act without realizing that it means the end of the known world.

And so John disputes with them, urging that their pedigrees of status, conviction, and influence are of no use, because all these belong to the old age now placed in deep jeopardy. The lesson ends in verse 12 with images of harsh judgment on those who hold too intensely to old power arrangements that do not grant access to the poor and marginal. ...

Advent is for pondering the promise. And so it is a time for joy. But Advent is also a time for sober inventory, to face how deeply enmeshed in and committed to the old regime we are. Many of us benefit from the marginality of the poor, and we do not want it to change. In the real commitments of our lives, we are deeply in conflict with the new reign. And we are without hope, meaning we do not want, expect, or welcome the new leader. In our moments of honesty, we crave our hopelessness because it lets us keep things as they are.

But the new sovereign comes on the wind—by the Spirit (Isaiah 11:2, Matthew 3:11, Romans 15:13). That means he cannot be stopped and will not be resisted. The Spirit works through us, among us, and even against us. The Spirit in these days would indeed work against our hopelessness to let us hope.

Amen and amen!

Blogging through Advent Ist Sunday

 1Advent appeals to me in one way but is an uncomfortable time as well. It is part of the church year that makes sense to me, in the way that it provides an approach to Christmas, in a way that Lent, quite frankly does not.In other words I "get" the liturgical logic of Advent. Lent as a time of discipline and learning to be disciples, of disciplining our desires, fits much more appropriately, in my view, into the long haul of "ordinary time". The approach to Easter is a time of engagement with the world of the principalities and powers, the time of public witness and confrontation as God's kingdom confronts the powers that be and the injustice and exploitation of Empire.

Anyway this year I thought I would try blogging on the Scripture readings for each Sunday in Advent, noting some thoughts and questions, using the readings in Sojourners - noting that the lectionary they use may differ somewhat from those in use in mainstream churches in Australia. Before moving to that I want to draw attention to a great collection of readings: Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas put together by the folks at Plough Publishing, still in print I believe. Some of them are brief, suitable for meditative reading. while others are longer. there is a hard challenging edge to the readings, particularly for Advent.

Isaiah 2:1-5 reminds us that the coming of God's kingdom is not some detached spiritual affair, unconnected to our politics and economics. Laurel A Dykstra in comments on this in Sojourners preaching the Word Commentary points out that:

The transformation of weapons into tools used for planting and harvesting crops shows that war and hunger are intimately connected, that finite resources cannot feed both the hungry and conquest. As Dwight Eisenhower said of modern weapons in a 1953 speech, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” 

The Isaiah reading also points out the deliberate and studied nature of war: Nations learn and teach it. It is neither natural nor accidental when farmers are trained as soldiers and tools of life become tools of death.

Romans 13:11-14 offers us a challenge to our frenetic consumerism - anticipating the demands of Lent where they are separated from the themes of waiting and anticipation that Advent offers. Walter Brueggeman, the distinguished old Testament scholar makes this connection explicit in Light the First Candle in his discussion of the passages for this day:

These readings ponder both preparation and expectation. 

The preparation is delineated in Romans 13. Paul urges the avoidance of “reveling, drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy” (verse 13). The mad rush of “Christmas preparation” drives us to self-indulgence and enough fatigue to make us edgy and quarrelsome. The alternative for Paul is to be unlike the world and not consumed by our “desires.”

The Gospel reading for the day, Matthew 24: 36-44 writes the message of waiting and expectation in large letters, underlining the theme. Matthew hits bold and underlines his theme to make sure we don't miss it.

Bonnie Greene in her meditation on this passage comments that:

Jesus' story of the people working in the field, one of whom was taken and the other left, has often been a touchstone of traditional spiritualities, particularly of the "that's incredible" variety. Most are otherworldly and focused on a Jesus who appears to bear the passkey to an otherworldly kingdom of God.

But there is afoot another spirituality that also draws life from this passage, one that is firmly rooted in human life and is responsive to the needs of our times. People who practice it tend to stress the real, historical Jesus and his behavioral as well as verbal announcement of the kingdom. For these people, Jesus' call to be alert and watchful for the coming of the Son of Man is a call to a way of life sensitive to God's active work of deliverance for the people of this world. Such a spirituality requires them to scan the horizon incessantly, watching for signs of renewal, for evidence that the suffering are rising up to new life.

In some parts of the world it's hard to miss the signs of God's work among people. But for us in the industrialized countries of the North, the distinction is often blurred by too close association with life-as-it-is-now; we haven't developed the skill to discern the spirits of our time. If the Son of God were to appear among us, some would scarcely recognize him; others would be utterly surprised and unprepared. (God in Mcdonald's)

The time of waiting in Matthew draws upon the somewhat discordant idea of God as a burglar.
Bill Wylie-Kellermann in Barbed wire and beyond: a theology of trespass unpacks this disturbing theme in a reflection on the activist tradition of Christian witness.

The preface to John's Gospel identifies the light with Christ Jesus. He is the one shining in the darkness and not overcome. It is abundantly clear that the light is not at all welcome in the world. He is not recognized or received, but hated and rejected. From the standpoint of the world and its claims, the incarnation is an intrusion, a divine incursion.

It is, I suppose, a kind of cosmic trespass. I am led to think of the way the New Testament speaks of the Lord's coming as a "thief in the night." The metaphor has always been troublesome to me. It evokes a little cringe. Our Lord the cat burglar. The point, of course, is the unexpected timing of things, but I suspect a further implication. Perhaps this glorified "breaking and entering" implies the breaking of our false securities. Our lives are penetrated and vulnerable. We are broken into. Here again, we find the truth sneaking in our back door.

Advent then is about dealing with a disturbance of our certainties and a breaking open of our comfortable life of business as usual. Perhaps our conversion starts from here.

Third Sunday in Advent - Moving beyond fear and resisting greed

Luke's account of the preaching of John the Baptist suggests that John would not have got many repeat invitations to churches in Australia.

3:7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
3:8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3:9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
3:10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"
3:11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
3:12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
3:13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
3:14 Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.

Walter Brueggeman links this passage with the other readings for this third Sunday in Advent with their contrasting focus on rejoicing and getting beyond fear in his comments on the readings:

Advent is rooted in Israel’s deep hope, here voiced by Zephaniah. In time to come, God will be allied with the lame, and the outcasts will be gathered home to well-being. The prophet anticipates a time to come that will be completely contrasted to the present, wherein the disabled are rejected and the outcasts are forever displaced persons, and oppression is the normal order of the day—so routine we do not notice.

The folk who heard John the Baptizer had a tough decision to make. They could easily collude with the dominant system of exploitation that features Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanius, Annas, and Caiaphus (Luke 3:1-2). The narrative names the entire power structure of the military-industrial-financial-ecclesial system of exploitation that was impressive and all-powerful. The news from John, then and now, is that we do not need to collude, need not count on pedigree or entitlements. What counts is deliberate, concrete, countercultural action. John offers three examples of such actions that are against collusion; they concern coats, taxation, and extortion. Such actions refuse the world of violent greed defined by subprime loans, foreclosures, and “market reform.”

Paul, echoing the “do not fear” of Zephaniah, knows that those driven by anxiety will collude. Those without fear and worry are free for the alternative (Philippians 4:6). Imagine—in Christmas “the Lord is near.” The Christ-child is the God-given antidote to colluding anxiety.

Sojonet Sermon preparation

Second sunday in Advent

Luke 3:1-2  the Gospel reading for the second Sunday in Advent is the the sort of gospel passage you always hoped not to have to read aloud. All those hard-to-pronounce names, like Ituraea and Lysanias. And what does it matter who was tetrarch of Abilene anyway?

Well the difficulty with dismissing this specific locating by Luke of God's activity, in its relation to the political power structure, is that the Gospel story is not just some vague, disembodied spirituality or generic brand religion. It is specific, located in a particular geography, history and configuration of political power.


So it matters.  It matters, especially if you're someone who cares about power and authority,  and how it is exercised. God for the record seems to have been and remain deeply interested in such matters.

Let's try it again. In the second term of George Bush Jr as American emperor, Tony Blair being his loyal ally in the invasion of Iraq, and John Howard of Australia being a member of the coalition of the Willing, and Pope John II was Bishop of Rome, the Word of God appeared in a slum in Baghad. Or something like that.

You get the picture. It was a scandal. This Word overlooked the ruling powers, both secular and religious, and went straight to the edges of acceptability—to the wilderness. The lesson is, if you want to understand the reign of God, look in unexpected places. Go to the margins, to those who we regard as enemies, or at least outsiders.

And watch out for this Word. It is disturbing, discomforting and dislocating. It has the power to level the hills and fill in the valleys. It is like "a refiner's fire" and "a fuller's soap," according to Malachi. It will purify us by the torch and rub us clean until it hurts.

You were expecting maybe just an innocent baby, that when surrounded by kitsch decorations, could be enthusiastically promoted by advertising agencies to underpin a consumption oriented economy?



(With grateful acknowledgements to Joyce Hollyday at sojonet for the original idea)

Advent: Hope for the long haul

Hope is on of the key themes of Advent, a season that makes little sense to many in a consumer oriented post Christendom culture.

Hope is not a wishful emotion that things will get better. Hope requires the discipline of facing reality over the long haul and shaping our lives in ways that are appropriate to sustain that hope. The discipline for example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer committing himself to building community, encouraging those who sought to enter into marriage and build families in the midst of war while committing himself to action to overthrow the Nazi Regime, or the discipline of a Dorothy Day whose discipleship was marked by "a long obedience" of building community, practising hospitality and resisting violence.

Robert Coles, a child psychiatrist and no mean theologian in his own way, who wrote books on both Bonhoeffer and Day, comments on the discipline required for a lived out hope that is focused on the life of Jesus:
   
Faith has to do with time, with moral anticipation. We are the creatures who look forward, struggle with time's constraints and possibilities. We are the creatures who wonder: what next, and why, and what to do, and whither—again, our time-bound selves demonstrating moral inquiry.

The psalmist pleads for God's instruction. The prophet foresees days of righteous glory, a welcome change indeed from the iniquity he has noticed so scrupulously and condemned with all his might and considerable eloquence. The disciple recalls Jesus himself telling of the future—its promise, but its mystery, too; and the disciple links the future to the present, as do the Old Testament teachers, who know that to wait is to watch—oneself as well as the skies for their signs. Finally, the itinerant early convert yearns for that great, blessed day, a reunion with God, and as his predecessors did, connects that future with the continuing present of our collective lives: how shall we live if we are to meet God and his judgment?

...what really matters is not the beauty and cogency of a particular moment (a poem, for instance, a sermon, yet another book...) but the way we bear ourselves over the long haul of things.

Christianity is the story of simple people following in their naked blindness an itinerant rabbi, scorned and soon enough killed. Christianity offers rural homilies and peasant parables, and not especially elegant riddles. Christianity offers hope all right, but lots of fear and worry, and certainly no solace for the high and mighty. Christianity offers the birth of a child—God become human; the extended test of time which a given life, his life, offered people long ago.
Sojourners Advent resources

Advent and the Church

Who is it we are waiting for at Advent? Who is this Jesus who we talk about being born in our hearts and in the world? How shall we respond?

Simon Barrow has some suggestions ins sermon for Advent entitled "Which Jesus are we expecting?" (full sermon is up on the Ekklesia site.)

If the Jesus we are expecting this Advent is truly the Christ of the Gospels, the comforter of the disturbed and the disturber of the comfortable, then the most important task for us as a church right now is to be the church – by which I mean to be the kind of people who are found regularly in the company of Jesus, in the midst of whatever else it is they are given to do.

Many people get easily confused about what ‘church’ is. They think it’s a building, or a religious institution, or a club for people who “enjoy that kind of thing”. It may indeed need structure, organisation and devotees. But it isn’t about them. ‘Church’, rather, is the name of a public space for risky, experimental living – for doing crazy stuff like forgiving others, offering hospitality to oddballs, sharing what we have in common and with others, learning how to live justly, and re-telling key stories of redemption and change. I’m paraphrasing some key elements from the gospels here. The word ekklesia refers to this kind of ‘zone of action’.

‘Church’ is also a place where people are specifically equipped to undertake these difficult activities by being taken deep into the waters of death and then raised through them with Christ, so that they know in their hearts how God’s love can embrace everything that could ever be thrown at us and still not be exhausted. That is, we are equipped for what lies ahead by being baptised “in the Holy Spirit”, in the life God gives beyond our limited capacities. This is vital because keeping Jesus’ company often amounts to being asked to “share God’s sufferings in the world” (to use Bonhoeffer’s poignant expression), and this is not something we can do in our own strength.