What To Do with Advent?

Well, we have finally arrived in the season of Advent. You know Advent, the season that arrives just after Black Friday and the day before Cyber-Monday. It's the season that many folks would just as soon skip, as it means a four-week wait until Christmas. So what is one to do in the meantime? Well, that is exactly what Advent is all about: what do we do in the meantime? "What meantime?" you may ask. The meantime between the first coming of God's messiah and the coming of God's ultimate kingdom. "Oh. Can't we just sing Christmas carols and pretend that Advent is already past?" Come on, admit it, you were thinking that, weren't you? The vast majority of Christians whom I have met over the years cannot get excited about Advent. And yet, for me, it is the most promising of the seasons of the Christian year. I was thinking back today, while I was sitting in church listening to a pastor skip right over Advent, to my first year in parish ministry. I recall how excited I was to lead worship during those Sundays in Advent. My congregations were not as excited, as I had replaced the usual four-week festival of carols with Advent hymns. Well, I was twenty-five and I am sure that they assumed that I would grow out of it. I have not grown out of it, though I admit to fudging a bit because we are not in session at the college for the whole season of Advent, so I let a carol or two into the service because our chapel family will not be together to sing them at the proper time.
More than ever before, I have been aware this past year of the creeping agnosticism that has pervaded the lives of many people with whom I work, both students and professionals. I wonder how much of it has to do with our insistence on immediate gratification? Since the Advent season is all about the promise of what is to come, folks cannot wait and so give up. What they forget, however, is that Advent is about one promise fulfilled and one still to come. God came to earth incarnate, and so, the promise of the fulfillment of the Kingdom is valid and worthy of belief. I hear so many people say that God does not exist, or, at least, that God is rather useless. Again, that insistence on immediate gratification is at work, claiming that God has let down humanity because evil still reigns in the world. There is no doubt that evil does reign in many places, and in the hearts of many people. And that is God's fault? The message of Advent promises a new world, where justice and equality are the standard. However, justice and equality are threats to power structures, and will always be so. Just as Advent calls for us to believe in a new way, so does justice insist that things that have always been must change. But folks are loath to accept change unless there is a personal, tangible benefit. This year, during the Black Friday craziness that I think shows America at its worst, people were interviewed by local news stations as to why they put up with the craziness. Some admitted that it's a fun family tradition and not so much about the shopping as about the chance to be together. Others were exalting over the fact that they had purchased really neat gifts for themselves at tremendous savings. So, a large number of people do not believe in the promise of Advent or in a God who is real and relevant, but they are willing to believe the myth that retailers hand them that bargains galore await them if they will simply alter their lifestyles for a day and do the bidding of the big box icons by getting up in the middle of the night. Few people get the actual bargains, and the whole travesty of the shopping addiction having something to do with the Christmas message is allowed to play on, and on. We need Advent's message, if for no other reason than to save us from ourselves.

Another Christ the King Sunday. Luke 1:63 - 69

As we approach the Sunday of Christ the King, I cannot help but wonder just what kind of king do we think he is? During the past week I have had occasion to think carefully about the faith that I espouse. I have been asked why I believe what I believe, and have responded to others who wonder why anyone would choose religious faith or which truth is really THE truth. These are good questions, to be sure, and I think people who call themselves Christians should not refuse to think seriously about the questions that those who are skeptical of faith in general, and Christianity in particular, may ask. While responding to a friend who wondered about how one can know which "truth" to follow, I found myself offering an answer that just came out of my head, quite easily. I told the friend that Christianity is the faith that called me. It is not the faith I chose to follow, it chose me. I was not raised in a religious home, though we were sent to church each week. I had to make my own decisions as to what would be important to me as a young man. My church was where I felt safe, respected and loved for who I was. It may have been the only place in my young life where I felt that way. Once I became active in the church, the faith element took over. The Christian message called to me to be a pastor, to be one who helped others to feel accepted and loved. Let me say that I have performed that duty quite imperfectly over the course of my life, but, at times, I have managed to get it right. How that has been possible lies, I think, in a truth that Brian Stoffregen, another blogger, highlighted. "I believe that one of the great, unique features of Christianity is that it is a religion of God coming down to us, rather than most other religions where we have to raise ourselves up to a godly plane." As a young man I was too full of self-doubt to ever believe that God would think I was worthy to do any kind of work for the Kingdom. I know that most young people, middle-aged and older folks also feel that way quite often. And there, I think, lies the definition of the kind of king we celebrate this Sunday. Jesus was not like Saul, David or Solomon and their tenures as kings of Israel. The kingship of Christ is one of love and inclusion, not one that calls attention to the power and status of the king. I was viewing some Christian clip art today, looking for an appropriate image for Christ the King Sunday, and I was disappointed that so many of the images lifted Christ up and played on the "Christus Victor" image. That image has long been accepted by the church when the church has attempted to explain how Christ overcame death and sin. I prefer the image of the insider who became as an outsider, which is the key to understanding the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, who deliberately took upon themselves the identity of outsiders, thus representing a God who loved all people. Christ the King Sunday is a time to reaffirm our belief in the very un-king-like Christ, who was God incarnate, coming down to our level, not insisting the we ascend to God's level. Christ the King assures that every young woman and man, and every old man and woman have an advocate who already loves them and accepts them, imperfect as they may be.

A Wee Little Man? Luke 19: 1 - 10

We all learned the song, "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he, he climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see....." You know the rest. I have always focused on Zacchaeus' role as a tax collector, and the negative community relations that were caused by that profession. Nothing new there. However, this year I discovered an article by Roberta Bondi in which she recounted a sermon she heard back in the 1970's that changed forever the way she reads this story. She was listening to a preacher, himself a man lacking physical stature, who read the story from Luke, changing just one word in the text. The text as written, states "He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature." Bondi recounts how the preacher changed the end of the sentence to "because Jesus was short in stature.". He defended his choice by stating, correctly, that the Greek does not define to whom "he" refers. Of course, it makes the most sense to read it as referring to Zacchaeus, but there is no rule that says that one must do that. Bondi makes the point that, if Jesus is the short guy in this story, it messes with our mental images of God. Have we ever watched a film where Jesus was portrayed as a wee little man? The closest the movies have come to offering such a portrayal is "Jesus Christ Superstar" in the guise of Ted Neeley portraying Jesus. The only problem I have with Neeley's Jesus persona is that he continues to portray him, though he must be at least sixty years of age, and Jesus lived to be about thirty-three!
We think of Jesus as a tall, Caucasian, good-looking man who would cause women to swoon. Never mind that Isaiah contains a passage that states that the coming messiah would not have any physical qualities that would cause people to want to look at him. We can handle Zacchaeus being really short, but could Jesus have been puny as well? Our whole Christus Victor mindset demands that Jesus be a strong and commanding presence. Imagine meeting Jesus in the next life and stating "I always imagined you as being taller!"
Sadly, our perception of what is an acceptable image of God is tied in to our idea of acceptable images of people. America finally elected a black man as president, and, his political failings aside, it is hard to believe that all of the Tea Party hoopla has nothing to do with his race. Women are still objectified, and in some Christian denominations, they are told to be subservient to men. Good thing God is not a woman or of another race, huh? Truth is, we tend to think of God as looking like us. And any attempt on the part of anyone else to change that perception is taken as a threat. It's very personal. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, but surely Jesus was not. Right?