November, 30, 2014
Today is the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of a new year in the Christian calendar. Advent, as you know, consists of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas day. It marks a time of preparation and waiting. The question is: “What are we waiting for?” “What are we preparing for?”
Sadly, the conventional interpretation of the Biblical texts for Advent is consistently individualistic, exclusively personal, and often sentimental or to put it straight, downright unfaithful. Conventional interpretation fits more with our culture than the Bible as a whole, the merging of commercial and religious music, generosity defined by buying for those who give presents to us. Is this all there is in terms of waiting and preparing? No, this is not all there is. There is a whole lot more, and we have to dig to find it.
Some years ago the rector of my wife’s Episcopal Church drew a firm line in saying no Christmas music before Christmas Day. When pressed on this his reply was that Advent is not Christmas. It is a time of preparation and waiting as the season gets darker and the days shorter. In Advent we talk about light, but it is in the future. In the meantime we are called to see, really see the darkness and accept it for what it is.
A lot of people in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, West Africa and Ferguson, Missouri are sitting in darkness this Advent. They are our human brothers and sisters. Let us sit with them and one another before we leap up and shout “Joy to the World.” The Old Testament prophets warn us about too early celebration. They decry many of their contemporaries saying, “They heal the wounds of my people lightly.”
This Advent I challenge us as a community to pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to empower us to cut through the individualism and sentimentality which our culture has bred into us, and to deepen our discernment between propaganda and reality. Today I want to take a stab in that direction. A half century ago a southern poet John Crow Ransom published a controversial essay, entitled “God Without Thunder” in which he protested the cultural captivity of sentimentality in our thinking about God and our understanding of Christian faith.
Last Sunday, the last Sunday of the old year of the Christian calendar, the theme of the Gospel text was judgment and the picture of the end of time with all human kind standing before God’s appointed judge the Son of Man whom Ched Myers and other scholars translate “the human one.” In Matthew 25, this figure has the task of separating people according to what they have done in this life, some being welcomed to eternal life in the Kingdom of God and others being cast into outer darkness for unending torment.
Kayla McClurg, our preacher last Sunday, when she reached the conclusion of her sermon on this parable said, “I don’t get it! I don’t see any gospel here, any presence of grace, forgiveness, nor conviction about sin that goes beyond individual misdeeds. When she said those words, my heart leaped up in appreciation. I felt, “This preacher is being real with us.Thank you, Kayla. Thank you, Jesus.”
Kayla didn’t argue that Matthew was wrong, that Jesus couldn’t have told that parable. Nor did she say, “This is what the Bible says, so that’s it.” She just said, “I don’t get it” and sat down, refusing to tie up her sermon in a neat ribbon. Instead she was saying, “This requires more attention.”
Walter Brueggemann says that when a text doesn’t make sense to us we should look for other scriptures that speak to the same issue and then explore what these different texts say to each other, and explore for dialogue between them.
For example, today’s Gospel text is from Mark 13. When we compare Mark 13 to Matthew 24 and 25 we find very interesting similarities and differences. Remember that Mark was written first and Matthew 10 to 15 years later to a different audience. Matthew chapters 24 and 25 copies Mark 13 almost verbatim and inserts into the Markan material the parable of the separation of humanity like sheep and goats at the last judgment.
Both Mark and Matthew toward the end of their gospels pick up upon the description of God’s judgment as a consuming fire introduced at the beginning of both gospels in the call to repentance of John the Baptist. Both Gospels mix challenge and encouragement: “Have faith … Get ready … Beware God’s judgment … Christ will come soon …. One has come who will save the world and us! … Don’t give up! … Christ will come again!”
Mark was addressing his own time – around 70 C.E. during or just after the Roman army put down Jewish resistance in Jerusalem by a scorched-earth destruction of Jerusalem. The urgent need for the Markan community was to get through the chaos and danger surrounding them. It was like Syria today.
When Matthew was written, a decade or so later, things had settled down somewhat. According to some scholars a major need at that time was to respond to the plight of Christian missionaries who had left their previous lives to go on the road as full time evangelists which required them to live on the generosity of their fellow Christians like Buddhist monks do to this day in the Far East. According to this view, Matthew is saying to his readers when people in need, especially these evangelists, come to you seeking food, clothing, and shelter, in as much as you act generously toward them you are doing so to the Lord himself and likewise when you withhold your help.
If we follow Brueggemann and use scripture to interpret scripture we will hold together in tension the message of John the Baptist of the Messiah as a “consuming fire” with Jesus’ word from the cross “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” and Paul’s message to the Romans in 11:32, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” This way we see that judgment is part of God’s love.
The four lectionary texts for this first Sunday in Advent 2014 speak of dark times as God’s judgment. At the same time on the horizon of the surrounding darkness, they see light. Each text speaks with a mixture of fear, pain and hope, and the last word is hope. This hope is grounded not in sentimentality or magical thinking but in Biblical realism which holds these opposites, fear and hope, pain and healing together. This is Biblical realism.
Psalm 80 is a lament composed and used in worship at a time when the northern kingdom of Israel was under attack by the superior military forces of the Assyrians. The psalmist cries out, “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you will lead Joseph like a flock! … Stir up your might and come to save us.”
In the Old Testament lectionary text from Isaiah 64, the prophet laments the turn of events in Judea after the exiles return from captivity in Babylon. For the poor of the land, instead of shared prosperity, the restoration is turning again into repression of the poor by the elite.
There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father, we are the clay, and you are the potter…. Do not remember our iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.”
These Advent texts bear witness that the ending of suffering and pain is not in our human control, and perhaps not even in God’s immediate control given God’s long range mission to reconcile an alienated world to himself. The ending of suffering and pain, however, is core to God’s promise, and integral with the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is what we pray for over and over when we recite the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
I once attended a Roman Catholic liturgical conference which focused on bringing liturgy to life through music and other art. I shall never forget how one of the leaders took a verse from Isaiah and created an Advent theme song. These were the words: “Be strong, do not be afraid; our God will come, will come to save us.” This is how it sounded when put to music. (Sing).
Salvation in scripture connects to “the Kingdom of God.” The Kingdom of God is that time and place when and where things follow God’s lead. It is a time and place of safety and freedom. The task we have today is to discern fresh language that is true to the Biblical witness which will enable us to compete with other promises of salvation. For example, consumerist capitalism promises “Shop till you drop and you will be saved.” “Think of how much further your money will go if you compete for those bargains on black Friday. Pay attention to the ads, go satisfy your heart’s desires and your cup will be filled to overflowing.”
My answer to the consumeristic capitalist is “Your understanding of salvation has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God and I tremble at the illusion to which you witness.”
My answer to the religious fundamentalist is, “I think I know what you want, but your language is not helping me come alongside you. I invite you to explore what we fellow human beings have in common and how God shares our humanity. I respect what you are trying to say about God’s action being that of a consuming fire, and what I want to talk about is how God’s love relates to God’s judgment.
To get into this common territory I suggest we explore two lines of thinking that may help us understand the connection between the image of consuming fire, the nature of love and the Kingdome of God.I submit two connectors: solidarity and fearlessness.
In scripture we read over and over that Jesus died for our sins. What does this declaration mean? Think about solidarity – human to human and God’s solidarity with us. If Matthew were living today, I imagine his retelling of the people asking when did they do or not do something that affected Jesus. My retelling is this: “When did we stand in solidarity with you or not stand in solidarity?"
With regard to fearlessness, the opposite of fear is love and the opposite of love is fear. When we move in the direction of fearless
ness we open our being to love, to offer it and to receive it. As long as we are controlled by fear we can’t do that. There is no room for love. As Paul puts it “Perfect love casts out fear.”
Consider the following story by the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn describing the mindset that enabled him and other political prisoners to overcome their interrogators in the Soviet gulags.
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself, ‘My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die – now or a little later… I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.
Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.
Here we see the power of fearlessness. Combine that with love and there is power indeed. This is how we are to think about and trust that Jesus died for our sins. He entered into solidarity with his fellow human beings who were deaf, dumb and blind as to what he was really up to. In his fearlessness he shouldered both the fear and violence of his adversaries, the Temple authorities and their allies the Roman state as well as the rest of us from the crowd to his intimate disciples. He walked into that pit of isolation and hatred trusting in the only one who knew his mission – Creator God. On the cross we see Jesus in solidarity with the rest of us and with Creator God on his witness of suffering grounded in love and the kind of trust in God’s solidarity with him that made him fearless.
What we Christians are waiting for and preparing for in this Advent season is to understand the meaning and presence in the world of solidarity and through that presence the possibility of fearlessness before God, with each other and standing on the vision of God’s coming Kingdom of justice, peace and love at work now and one day to come in fullness in this world. This is not “waiting in general” as is the case of all human existence. Advent is a time of waiting and preparing for transformation of all things.
Now we live in darkness for if it is darkness for our brother and sister with whom we are in solidarity, it is also darkness for us. On the horizon is light, the beginning of that future time when all things are made new, and the whole of creation is fearless in the solidarity of love. Amen