[Advent 4: Love] Jesus, waiting to be born, whether we like it or not

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When Jesus' mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous person and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of God appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, child of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a child, whom you are to name Jesus, for this child will save the people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by God through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a child, whom they shall name Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took Mary as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a child; and they named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:18-25 (NRSV alt. -- again, thanks to Cole and Ruth Ellen)

In her sermon, Molly talked a lot about Molly's "Yes," suggesting it wasn't as whole-hearted as it gets made out to be. As she noted, Mary doesn't say anything in Matthew's account.

This silence (or less charitably, this erasure of Mary) is jarring in contrast to Luke's account. But perhaps this reticent, hidden mother-to-be resonates far more with us than the bold assured young woman who proclaims that God is doing great things through her, who proclaims not only that God will but that God has upended the order of the world.

Molly talked about Mary's being "found out." Have there been changes in your life that you have been reluctant to voice? Are there ways that God has been growing something new in you that you have wished to hide -- from others and perhaps even from your own self?

To give us some context, Matthew prefaces this story with Jesus' genealogy -- a genealogy which contains 4 women (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba) plus Mary makes 5. Nanette Sawyer writes:

Each of these women acted boldly and against convention in order to bring about some kind of justice. [...] These women all practiced a kind of righteousness that might appear scandalous. And Joseph is invited to do the same by accepting Mary, even though she is pregnant, not by him. We might ask ourselves, when does breaking with convention actually lead us toward a greater righteousness? When is righteousness scandalous?

Even if we didn't have Luke's account, could we infer about Mary based on the company she is placed in? Tamar, who disguises herself, takes real risks, and makes bold requests ... subverting the patriarchy to achieve the goals the patriarch has denied her. Rahab, who protects the Israelite spies when they come to invade and destroy her city. Ruth, who insists on following her mother-in-law to a foreign land, trusting this old woman in everything, even letting herself be married off and taking her mother-in-law's advice on how to seduce this man. Bathsheba, who is taken to bed by King David while she is still married (and after she becomes pregnant, David sets her husband up to be killed in war and then marries her himself to hide his crime) and stays with David through his old age, at which point she successfully gets her son named as heir to the throne rather than David's firstborn son.

I could write at length about this genealogy -- about how sexuality, subversion of patriarchy, and Other-ness play out in their narratives and about what placing them in conversation with each other can bring up. But our text isn't actually the Matthean genealogy, so as a segue I offer you this excerpt from Warren Carter's Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (as quoted by Brian Stoffregen):

This conception without male agency and outside marriage circumvents the patriarchal household structure emphasized in 1:1-17. God is not bound by a structure that privileges male power. God seems to counter it, a theme that will continue as Jesus creates a new community in which the household is "not ruled by or even defined by a male head of the house" [quote from Levine, "Matthew," 254](see 4:18-22; 12:46-50; chs. 19-20).

Given how insistent people are about Jesus' maleness (in progressive churches, you may well hear God and the Holy Spirit referred to as "She," but I can basically guarantee you that you will never hear Jesus so referred to), I find this somewhat ironic. But I really like this idea. Jesus consistently privileges chosen family over family of origin; and Jesus consistently shows up in unexpected places, rejecting societal rules and lifting up those whom society has cast aside. To insist that the new family Jesus is creating must be headed by a man is to deny the reversal of the ways of the world which is at the core of that new creation.

Joseph is nearly erased in Luke's account (in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him appearance, he brings his family to Bethlehem for the Roman census, but the person Mary actually converses with is her also-miraculously-pregnant cousin Elizabeth), but Matthew's account lets us into his head some. Luke shows us Mary who is told (by the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation) what is going to happen and who then elaborates on what this means (in the Magnificat, delivered in the presence of Elizabeth -- the first human to recognize what has happened to Mary). But Joseph is taken by surprise by these events.

Jerry Goebel writes, "The angel had to 'wake up' Joseph from a spiritual stupor lest he sleep away his opportunity to participate in God's plan."

Are there ways God has been trying to "wake you up"? Are there people you would like to send away quietly whom God is calling you to embrace? (Important caveat: Not people whom you genuinely need to distance yourself from for your health and safety, but people you'd like to avoid just because it's easier, more comfortable, that way.)

Are there ways in which God is calling you to participate in something new God is doing in the world which you would rather distance yourself from?

This Matthew passage contains the familiar naming of Jesus as "Emmanuel," "God with us."

Brian Stoffregen writes:

it seems to me that the translation "God is with us" doesn't completely capture the sense of the Hebrew. The words suggest that "God is in common with us people" -- or "God is one of us."

What would it mean for God to be common with you?

After Megyn Kelly's comments on Fox News, there have been many articles about the historical Saint Nicholas and the historical Jesus, and the ways that representation plays out today -- including "White People Need a Non-White Jesus" on Sojourners.

Sarah Over the Moon on Patheos has written about God as a woman and God as a baby (this last link contains curse words).

Do any of these resonate with you as a God who is common with you, or as a God who challenges you to radical openness by being UNLIKE you? Is there a particular incarnation you feel you need which is not represented among these options?

Brian P. Stoffregen writes:

Can we believe that in this infant, God is with us as our savior? It can be safer to argue about what might have happened at Jesus' birth way back in history; than to live our lives today confessing and believing that "God is with us/me right now". I think that some of the historical arguments can be ways of avoiding the living God now. I once suggested from something I read, that all some people want is an inoculation of Christianity -- just enough of it so that they don't catch the real thing. Sometimes Christmas is no more than a "booster shot" -- something that helps us not catch the real thing. The real thing is "God is with us". The "savior" has been born and is with us. Yet many people feel more in bondage at Christmas time -- bondage to attend parties, buy gifts, spend too much money, be happy, etc. We may celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace by making our lives more chaotic; the coming of the Lord of Life by becoming more depressed. These can be indications that we need more of the real thing. How do we live today knowing that the savior, God-is-with-us now?

Where does this Nativity story break into your life, Beloved?

As we're recovering from secular Christmas, are there ways we can welcome the God of true life and true peace into our lives? Are there ways we can make room for something new to be born in us?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments -- responding to any of the questions I've asked throughout this blogpost or raising questions of your own, or simply sharing some thoughts. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)

[Advent 3: Joy] the joy of liberation -- not just for ourselves but for all

The days are surely coming, says God, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their spouse, says God. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says God: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know God," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says God; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NRSV, alt.)

This was our Scripture reading the morning of the Cantata, the Sunday of Joy during the season of Advent.

What joy does this promise bring to you?

What would it mean for God to forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more?

What would it mean for you to know God and for God's law to be written on your heart?

Rev. Dr. Stan G. B. Duncan writes:

The central ethical principle of the Hebrew Scriptures and echoed in the Christian scriptures is that God has liberated (saved, redeemed) us and now we should liberate and redeem others. What it means to be a religious person is to liberate slaves. And that means slaves of psychic demons in abusive homes, and it means physical demons of countries so enmeshed in the depths of debt repayments that their children starve and die in infancy. But God, in spite of our perpetual inclination to break the covenant, comes to us in these words of Jeremiah and offers us a second (and third and fourth) chance. "Renew the covenant, and have it written on your hearts, where it will emanate out from you rather than being imposed from outside onto you." God is always calling us back to the basics of worship and justice. God is always offering us a chance to come home from Babylon. It is up to us to make the decision to make the journey.

"God is always offering us a chance to come home from Babylon."

Nothing we have done (or failed to do) can keep us apart from God. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, "nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable" can separate us from the love of God (from Romans 8:38-39).

But as Duncan points out, this isn't just about our own personal liberation. To be united with God's love also means to be connected to God's love for all others -- to know God is to have God's law written on our hearts.

Advent 1 I quoted William Loader on what "the day of the Lord" meant in the prophetic tradition. Similarly, Duncan talks about the Jubilee Year in connection with "the day of the Lord" and "the year of the Lord’s favor." He reminds us that "sin" and "debt" are often nearly interchangeable terms in the Biblical tradition.

Many of us middle-class folks may not feel a bone-deep yearning for our debts to be forgiven (though certainly many of us wouldn't mind our student loans being forgiven), but for people suffering under Roman occupation, in debt slavery, to have their debts forgiven would have been literally life-changing.

Duncan writes:

A Jubilee sermon could be based on the justice demands of the notion of the "knowledge of God." Walter Brueggemann, commenting on this passage, argues that one cannot know God without being attentive to the needs of the poor and the weak. And he says it is not that one is derived intellectually from the other, "rather, the two are synonymous. One could scarcely imagine a more radical and subversive theological claim."^[5] This is very similar to the claims about loving God in the New Testament. See for example the blunt words of 1 John 4:20-21: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their [siblings], are liars."

Hosea, a contemporary of Jeremiah, reports that when "there is no knowledge of God in the land, swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish...." (4:1b-3a). The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez makes the point that God is encountered in concrete acts of justice an mercy to others. So if justice is not present, then God is not present. "To know [YHWH]...is to establish just relationships among persons, it is to recognize the rights of the poor. The God of Biblical revelation is known through interhuman justice. When justice does not exist, God is not known; God is absent."^[6]

[5] Brueggemann, "Covenant as a Subversive Paradigm," A Social Reading of the Old Testament: Prophetic Approaches to Israel's Communal Life (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress: 1994), p. 49.

[6] A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, tr. Sr. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Maryknoll: 1988, revised ed.), p. 110-111.

We are reminded that Advent Joy is not just for ourselves, but for all of God's children. Living in harmony with God means also sharing in God's desires for justice and mercy for all.

I know for me, this is the hardest part. To believe that God loves me even with all the terrible things I think and say and do? That's easy. That doesn't require any work or change on my part.

But the reminder that I'm supposed to work toward liberation from all sorts of oppression for my kindred here on earth? That takes work. To be liberated from my insular self-interest, to risk my security and comfort on behalf of others (whom I may not know or even like), that kind of radical transformation is scary. But that's what it means to truly know God. And it's a one-sided God's covenant if I only reap the personal benefits and ignore any obligations on my end.

Hillel the Elder asks, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" (Pirkei Avot 1:14).

What about you, Beloved? What spoke to you in this passage?

Is the promise of knowing God directly and intimately, appealing or frightening or a little bit of each?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments -- responding to any of the questions I've asked throughout this blogpost or raising questions of your own, or simply sharing some thoughts. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)

[Advent 2: Peace] building peace by building relationships, and vulnerability

From the stump of Jesse a shoot will come out, and from Jesse's roots will grow a branch:
upon which the spirit of the God--the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of God--shall rest;
whose delight will be in the fear of God;
who shall not judge by sight alone, nor decide only by hearing;
but who will judge the poor with righteousness, and decide with equity for the meek of the Earth;
whose mouth's rod shall strike the Earth, and whose lips' breath will kill the wicked;
whose waist shall be belted with righteousness, and whose loins belted with faithfulness.

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

On that day as a signal to the peoples shall stand the root of Jesse, of whom all the nations inquire, and whose dwelling shall be glorious.

Isaiah 11:1-10 (NRSV, alt. -- many thanks to Cole and Ruth Ellen)

This text is familiar from the Advent/Christmas cycle of texts every year, but its very familiarity means it can be hard to actually hear what it's saying.

Danielle Shroyer (you may remember her from last week, Advent 1, commenting about Revelation) wrote: " 'Tis the season to dream big dreams and hope big hopes. But the hardest question remains: Why is the earth not yet filled with the knowledge of the Lord?"

My immediate thought was that this invocation of "the earth being full of the knowledge of the Lord" seemed kind of random. Yes, it's the penultimate sentence of the entire passage and I had skipped right over it.

Before I even read the comments, I answered her question: "Because we [the Church] haven't lived out Christlike lives."

There was some discussion in the comments about the tension between abdicating responsibility and burning ourselves out, and Wesley Welborn said:

Let me offer a different way of phrasing one of your statements. Rather than saying, "If I get the idea that I can make things right by trying harder and fixing things, then it will always end in (disappointment?)" how about, "If we allow Christ to work through us to complete God's vision for creation, it will certainly end in victory." If we are trying to build God's kingdom on our own, it will certainly end in disappointment. If the church is guided and empowered by the Spirit of Christ, God's purposes cannot be thwarted. It has and will take a very long time, in part because the church has often been unfaithful to its calling. Why doesn't Christ just do it without us? Perhaps, in part, because a purpose of building the Kingdom of God on earth is to give us the opportunity to mature into the image of Christ as we take on the responsibility of kingdom-building. I think this is the sacrificial cross Christ has called us to take up.

Isaiah says that on this branch of Jesse will rest the spirit of God -- the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of God. Are there ways we can cultivate an attentiveness to that spirit, stay still long enough to let it rest on us for a moment?

In reflecting on the various pieces of this text and on the numerous commentaries I've read, what has most struck me has been vulnerability.

The Meditation in our bulletin this Sunday was:

"The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness." - Pope Francis

This is from Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation entitled Evangelii Gaudium ("The Joy of the Gospel") -- paragraph 88, specifically; part of the section entitled "Yes to the new relationships brought by Christ."

I think he is overly dismissive of relationships mediated by the Internet/electronics, but I do appreciate his emphasis on social gospel and on being in full relationship with people, with all the messiness and challenge that entails.

He writes (emphasis mine):

88. The Christian ideal will always be a summons to overcome suspicion, habitual mistrust, fear of losing our privacy, all the defensive attitudes which today's world imposes on us. Many try to escape from others and take refuge in the comfort of their privacy or in a small circle of close friends, renouncing the realism of the social aspect of the Gospel. For just as some people want a purely spiritual Christ, without flesh and without the cross, they also want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command. Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.

The Isaian prophecy about the wolf and the lamb etc. is about all of Creation living together in harmony, none hurting or destroying any. While we can't rewire carnivore biology, we can build relationships with those around us. We can reach out to those we have hurt, those we fear we might hurt or disappoint, those we fear might hurt or disappoint us, and even sometimes those who have hurt us (caveat: sometimes in this fallen world it's not safe to do so -- just as we likely wouldn't bring a bear onto our cattle farm, sometimes we need to maintain a safe distance from people who are toxic to us).

Are there ways we can move out of our comfort zone, to be in fuller relationship with those around us, to bind up what is broken and build the world of God's longing?

Commenting on the Isaiah text, Melissa Bane Sevier writes:

All sides must have permission to hope. The weak need to be able to hope they will not be consumed by the powerful. The strong—and perhaps this is the more difficult type of hope—the strong need to be able to hope they do not need to consume another in order to prosper.

Isaiah told his people that they needed to give themselves permission to dream of peace, permission to hope for a better time.

It's easy to talk about this text as it relates to the weak, but many of us are in the position of the "strong" -- reluctant to give up our power, our wealth. What do we fear God might ask us to give up if we really said, "God, your will not mine be done"? What predatory urges, what grasping for security, is God asking us to let go of so that others can dwell amongst us?

One of the lines from this Isaiah text which most obviously connects it to the Nativity story is, "And a little child shall lead them."

Patheos blogger Sarah Over the Moon wrote:

White supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy (as bell hooks calls it) wants us to worship a cisgender, adult man who reflects the "right" class and who holds institutional power. It wants us to worship this image so that when we encounter cisgender, adult men from the "right" class who hold institutional power in the world, we will be less likely to question their right to rule.

The image of God as a baby born to a poor family, from the "wrong" part of town, can challenge that.

[...]

I believe in a God who is in solidarity with the oppressed, and I believe that God With Us is first and foremost God With The Oppressed. And the embodiment of God according to the Christian narrative begins in a baby.

"Take care that you do not despise these little ones..."

Many of us have grown up with strong theologies of Jesus as Lord -- Jesus who, triumphant over death, sits at the right hand of the Father and will return with a flaming sword to judge and destroy. But Jesus consistently rejected traditional earthly forms of power. To insist that Jesus operate according to our models of how power works, I would argue, in fact rejects Jesus' sovereignty -- saying we know better how to be God, how to be Savior.

As Sarah suggests, Jesus reminds us that institutional power. Chapter 2 of Matthew's Gospel has the Magi coming to King Herod in Jerusalem -- a seat of institutional power -- and Herod's response to this birth of a ruler who is to fulfill Micah 5:2 is to slaughter all the infants in and around Bethlehem. In case the import of this genocide fails to touch us, Matthew echoes the prophet Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more" (Jeremiah 31:15). We don't even need to get to the persecution of the grown-up Jesus for it to be clear that institutional power and God rarely sit comfortably together.

In her sermon on Sunday, Molly commented on the image of all the animals living together in vegetarian bliss -- that one of the oddities of the text is that it seems to suggest there was something wrong with how some of the animals were created in the first place. I suggested in my email that perhaps this hyperbolic scene isn't meant literally but is meant to suggest just how radically God will be transforming the entirety of Creation.

What vicious cycles do we need to break (and/or, what virtuous cycles do we need to start) to make space for God's transforming peace in our lives? Are there habits that seem as deeply-ingrained in us as a lion's appetite for meat?

Rachel C. Lewis has a piece on ThoughtCatalog called "Tell The People You Love That You Love Them" in which she writes:

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, "Kiss me harder," and "You're a good person," and, "You brighten my day." I live my life as straight-forward as possible.

Because one day, I might get hit by a bus.

[...]

Maybe it's weird. Maybe it's scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands.

But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate.

And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.

We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans.

We never know when the bus is coming.

I think this kind of radical honesty heartens God -- we have a finite time on this earth (at least on this side of the Veil) and God wants us to live fully with all we have been given.

And I think it's not too bold to say that by being honest about our wants and needs, and being attentive and responsive to those of others, we can help build peace on earth.

I mostly think of "root" and "branch" when I think of this Isaiah passage, forgetting about the fact that it opens with "stump." Whatever we think is dead in our life, unable to bear fruit any longer -- God can grow something new. Whatever mistakes we have made, whatever we have done or failed to do, none of it is too big for God to repair. God calls us to be co-creators in this work, but we don't have to (in fact, cannot) do it alone.

What about you, Beloved?

What did this reading from Isaiah bring up for you? Does it call you into new cycles? Do you think I've overreached in my arguments about what this text might be saying? Have I not dug into pieces you would be more interested in, like what this six-fold spirit of God means or how a vegetarian diet might help build this Isaian vision?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments -- responding to any of the questions I've asked throughout this blogpost or raising questions of your own, or simply sharing some thoughts. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)

[Advent 1: Hope] "Ours is only to watch and attend and love."

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Child, but only the Parent. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Child of Humanity.

For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Child of Humanity.

Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day the Promised One is coming.

But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, the owner would have stayed awake and would not allowed the house to be broken into.

Therefore you also must be ready, for the Child of Humanity is coming at an unexpected hour.

Matthew 24:36-44 (NRSV, alt)

Advent is a season of expectant (one might say, pregnant) waiting. We prepare ourselves for the inbreaking of God Incarnate -- both recalling the baby born to Mary and anticipating the Second Coming of the Messiah.

But what does "being ready" in this context mean?

Anna Carter Florence reflected on this passage while sitting at an outdoor restaurant. She writes:

But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

If you could learn exactly when and how your life would end, would you want to know?

If you could learn exactly when and how the world would end, would you want to know?

If you could learn exactly who would be taken and who would be left, and why, would you want to know?

[...]

Some of us believe that knowledge—of the when, the how, the who, and the why—will give us power.

No, says Matthew. No. It will not give you power. It will give you heartbreak.

If you could be the one to decide when, and how, and who, and why—would you truly want to be? Would you really want to hold each stranger and loved one and be forced to choose?

I have a friend in Budapest, a Protestant clergyman. Since the fall of Communism, it is now possible for each Hungarian citizen to go to the government and request his or her "file," to read the reports and denunciations it contains. My friend refuses to retrieve his file. "What would I learn?" he says. "That a colleague, perhaps, denounced me? That a friend betrayed me? What would I do with that knowledge? Would it make a difference in how I live? No," he says emphatically; "I do not want that knowledge. I leave it to God." Of that day and hour, no one knows; only God. So keep watch. Keep awake. It seems to me that God has given us the greatest blessing. Ours is only to watch and attend and love. It is not to choose. In God's immense wisdom and compassion, God has spared us that most inscrutable and painful of tasks, and instead, given us a table by the river.

I am really tempted to just drop the mic here -- so I won't judge you if you stop reading now and choose to meditate just on that for the remainder of the week :)

But if and when you're ready, there is more of a blogpost below.

This Matthew text is a favorite of "Left Behind" Rapture enthusiasts, with its dramatic images of people engaged in everyday activities suddenly and without warning magically sundered, its apocalyptic echoes of the Flood at the time of Noah...

As Florence puts it, "Some of us believe that knowledge—of the when, the how, the who, and the why—will give us power." But, she asserts, "It will not give you power. It will give you heartbreak."

"Ours," she says, "is only to watch and attend and love."

Now, this passage doesn't actually speak about love, so this may seem like a non sequitur reading into the text.

But just a couple chapters earlier, Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, who had tried a trick question about the Resurrection, and in the very next lines after that story, we read:

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

Jesus said, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' ^{[Deuteronomy 6:4-5]} This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' ^{[Leviticus 19:18]} On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV, alt.)

So if two chapters later Jesus says that we must be always ready for the coming of the Promised One, and we're not sure what that entails, those Greatest Commandments seem a very good place to start.

William Loader says:

The alternative is to accept that we are sometimes unable to control knowledge and need to trust. The opening saying is a dramatic way of reminding us that the main thing to know about the future is God! One could even argue that that is all we need to know - and then trust and live in openness to the same God here and now.

The passage assumes more than this. It assumes there is 'that day' to come. The 'day of the Lord' has prophetic roots. It is also a way of saying the future is God's. It is God's day! Traditionally it was thought of as a particular point of time in the future when God would intervene in history. Associated with it were hopes of deliverance, vindication, and the obverse: judgement. Amos attacked those who looked to it for their consolation while not addressing their injustices in the present and warned that the day of the Lord would be far from good news for them.

Judgement is a major theme for Matthew and Matthew's tradition. Belief in a particular wind-up of history in this way is more difficult to sustain these days, but it stands firmly in the tradition and it asserts strongly: in the end, God, as in the beginning, God. It also asserts: in the end accountability and justice, a ground for hope; in the end peace among the nations.

The christology comes in strongly as the day is now also the day of Christ. For it is a Jesus-shaped God who is our hope. More than that, it is asserting: in the end: God and Jesus. Elsewhere Jesus spoke of the 'day' as one where he would share a meal again with his disciples. The context is hope and inclusion, a vision of a transformed world. This is a vision which we make our agenda and which feeds us in the eucharist, itself a symbol of the hope of reconciliation for all.

[...]

The watching is a dramatic way of speaking about God-connectedness. It is not very edifying if it is reduced to an exhortation not to misbehave in case you get 'caught with your pants down', as they say, when Jesus comes. It is about developing an awareness of what the God of the future is saying and doing in the present, to take a God perspective on the issues of the day and the future and to let that happen at all levels of our reality, from our personal lives to our international community, including our co-reality in creation. It is a stance nourished by the eucharistic vision of hope. It is taking the eucharistic table into the community, into the present, and letting it watch us and keep us awake to what is happening.

Culturally conditioned as we are, I think it's easy for us to just take Jesus' mention of "the day" as a generic apocalyptic invocation, entailing destruction and judgment but generally hazy and unclear. Loader reminds us that "the day of the Lord" was a long-standing idea in Judaism and so when Jesus talks about "that day," it isn't just a dark mystery but has some very distinct connotations.

And those connotations are not just festive "Christmas cheer." Loader reminds us that, "Amos attacked those who looked to it for their consolation while not addressing their injustices in the present and warned that the day of the Lord would be far from good news for them." And although Loader doesn't say it explicitly, I would remind us that Amos would be raging against many of us -- we in our material comfort built on the suffering of so many.

Mary's Magnificat proclaims that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, has brought down the powerful from their thrones [...] and sent the rich away empty." (from Luke 1:51-53, NRSV). Eugene Peterson's The Message makes this much more dramatic -- "bluffing braggarts," "tyrants," and "the callous rich" -- but I think such language makes it easy for us to distance ourselves from those Monstrous Evil Others, to avoid any indictment that might be directed at us.

Christ's coming is Good News, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be "good news" for all of us. God is turning the world and its usual way of doing things upside-down and inside-out, and that's going to disrupt and unsettle us.

I like Loader's idea of "developing an awareness of what the God of the future is saying and doing in the present, to take a God perspective on the issues of the day and the future and to let that happen at all levels of our reality, from our personal lives to our international community, including our co-reality in creation."

Some of this will be comforting and some of it will be distressing, but it is the attentiveness we are called to.

Rev. Bost commented on a Hardest Question post:

I think part of the difficulty with the idea of waiting, notwithstanding our general preoccupation with instant gratification, is that is seems so passive. I wonder if our waiting for Messiah is more akin to a parent sitting vigil by the bedside of a child who has only spoken softly recently or has not appeared to have spoken in a very long time. The parent sits there, not passively, but actively, ready to hang on the first word or sign of life. The parent knows that any movement will be enough to sustain them for the next 24 hours.

The image that comes to mind is that of Robert Louis Stevenson who, as a child, was very ill. One night young Robert was staring out his window, when his caregiver came in to check on him. When asked what he was doing, Stevenson said he was watching the man punch holes in the darkness. Of course, what he was seeing was the person in charge of manually lighting the street lamps.

Advent for me is, at least, a revolution of light. We dare not forget that the act of lighting a light in the midst of darkness is a profound gesture of hope. If nothing else, the light helps light up the hidden places of our lives, even if sometimes the nature of our "hidden places" is to attempt to overcome the light. Advent is then, also, an exercise in truth-telling.

How does our live manifest and bear witness to the crucified and risen Christ? Before rushing to the second noel, perhaps we would do well to better appropriate the first. I'm not sure I'm prepared for Jesus 2.0.

Remember the "eucharistic hope" that Loader mentioned? This is the kind of bedside vigil that Bost describes. This is the hope of people who are desperately yearning for a change in Business As Usual, who trust that God can make all things new and who cry out, "How long, O God, how long must we wait?" -- and who are always, achingly, listening for a whisper from the Spirit, searching the horizon for a hint of dawning light, skin prickling for a healing touch.

One of the great Advent hymns, Johannes Olearius' "Comfort, Comfort O My People," [#101 in The New Century Hymnal; YouTube link] draws on Isaiah 40:1-8:

"Comfort, comfort O my people, tell of peace," thus says our God;
Comfort those whose hearts are shrouded, mourning under sorrow's load.
Speak unto Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them;
Tell them that their sins I cover, and their warfare now is over.

This is our Advent hope.

I also really like Bost's suggestion that "Advent is an exercise in truth-telling." We speak truth to power about the present darkness and injustice, and we also proclaim truth about the One who will remake this world with justice and mercy.

Looking through the hymnal this evening, I was reminded that we haven't yet encountered John the Baptist:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
      for you will go before the Promised One to prepare her ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to God's people
      by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
      the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
      to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Luke 1:76-79 (NRSV, alt.)

I think it is probably Pastor Tiffany's fault that I always hear this as directed at me, at us.

Bost mentions Advent as a "revolution of light." How can we punch holes in the darkness, make a way where there seems to be no way, build the hoped-for realm of shalom?

John Bowring's hymn "Watcher, Tell Us of the Night" [#103 in The New Century Hymnal; YouTube link] opens: "Watcher, tell us of the night, what its signs of promise are." Can we be deeply attentive to all of Creation around us as Florence suggests? Can we seek the signs of promise in the night?

For whatever it may mean that Matthew's Jesus tells us that some will be taken and some will be left, Danielle Shroyer points out:

The entire Book of Revelation describes Jesus coming to live with us forever, here on Earth. "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them" (Revelation 21:3).

So how do we build a home for Jesus among us?

I leave you with James Boyce's suggestion:

It will help to observe Matthew's own way of doing this. In the lessons that follow it is as if Matthew imagines in a series of parables unique to his gospel what this watchfulness would look like: a servant who takes faithful care of the master's household (24:45-51); ten maidens, five of whom keep their lamps trimmed (25:1-13); stewards who care responsibly for what is entrusted to them (25:14-30); or ones who "not-knowing" still go about unconsciously caring for those in need (25:31-46).

***

I think a number of these commentators are helpful in framing Advent hope -- as attentiveness and as action that organically grows out of that attentiveness to God and to the world.

What about you, Beloved?

Do you think I or others over-state or under-state the case at times? Have we elided important issues? Are the there other things this text brought up for you? Is any of this helpful to you in your own Advent journey?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)