Advent 2
There is a perpetual struggle we (or maybe just I?) encounter this time of year. How are we supposed to speak of Advent? We know that we wish someone a “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays”…but what is the appropriate Advent greeting? Is it a “happy Advent?” A “solemn Advent?” An “expectant Advent?” A “hopeful Advent?” I’m not quite sure what the adjective of the season is. I suspect this conundrum is, in part, because of how Advent has been adopted or co-opted by our culture. There was a story on NPR last week about the plethora of Advent calendars available in stores near you.
If you need 24 new fishing hooks, a fishing Advent calendar is available on Amazon. For mystery fans, you can solve “the murder on the yuletide express” with an Advent calendar if 24 murder mystery clues. If your cat wants to get in on the fun, you can get the “Meowy Christmas” Advent Calendar. An edible marijuana or whiskey calendar is available if those are your things. If you like the finer things in life the $3000 fine jewelry calendar might be up your alley. As the host of this story, Peter O’Dowd, named, “the range of Advent calendars has gone from sacred to just about anything you can imagine.” He wondered whether Advent has simply been enveloped in “pure consumerism” and “unboxing culture.” He finally reflected, “It kind of seems like we’ve forgotten about the arrival of Jesus.” I think he’s right.
Advent is a peculiar time for us as Christians, during which we mark time differently than those who live December as a countdown to Christmas. The world around us tells us these weeks leading up to Christmas are a time of joy and preparation. We need to prepare our Christmas lists, purchase our presents, decorate our houses, send out our Christmas cards, attend our various Christmas parties…and somehow find Christmas cheer in a frenzy of activity. Advent though, isn’t about this type of preparation. And while Peter O’Dowd was right that we seem to have forgotten about the arrival of Jesus as a part of Advent, Advent isn’t just about Christmas or awaiting the birth of Jesus.
During Advent, we are not like the child who poked his finger through the wrapping paper before Christmas to see his present, and then still acts surprised on Christmas morning. We know what is coming on Christmas and Advent isn’t a time of pretending otherwise. Even though Advent culminates in our celebration of Jesus’ birth, it doesn’t just direct our attention to the past to remember the birth of the Messiah. Advent invites us to imagine a new future as we await Christ’s return. It is a reminder that the status quo is not the end of the story. It is a season of hope for what will be, no matter what the present holds.
Our stories of Advent show us what this means and how to do it. They are not the glad stories of Christmas when light pierces the darkness and, as the Gospel of John puts it, “the darkness couldn’t put it out” (John 1:5, The Message). Rather, the stories of Advent often come from the dark places, the places of struggle and shattered dreams. You see, we’re not just containing our Christmas cheer in Advent; we’re recognizing the ways things are not okay…even if we hope and trust that someday they will be. That is the place from which we hear the Prophet Isaiah today. It is worth a brief historical recap to understand how we get to the words from Isaiah we hear…what led up to the first advent.
After the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt, after their 40 year journey to the promised land, they settled as a nation under the authority of God. The 12 tribes of Israel were held together by their covenant with God rather than centralized power or leadership. That is, until the tribes grew dissatisfied with the political and military instability of their governance and begged for a king like their neighboring nations. This had more than political implications: theologically, it indicated a lack of trust in God’s care and leadership of God’s chosen people. The legacy of kings was mixed: with centralized power came initial national unity and military protection from surrounding nations, but also came corruption and political divisions. Among all the kings, the second, David, is remembered as the most faithful to God’s hopes and intentions for Israel. Following the death of David’s successor and son, Solomon, the 10 tribes in the north of Israel chose a king that was not in David’s bloodline. This king was rejected by the tribes of the south who recognized Solomon’s son as the rightful king. And so, after just three kings, Israel was divided in two kingdoms, each with its own king. This fracture, however, wasn’t simply a sudden reaction to divided loyalties, it was also a result of economic strain that led to injustice between tribes, corruption among monarchs, and theological disputes.
In the 200 years following the division of Israel, a series of kings arose in both the southern and northern kingdoms. Scripture judges the kings of the northern kingdom harshly – naming their corruption, injustice, exploitation of the poor, and idolatry – following gods other than the God of Israel. In the southern kingdom, kings received mixed reports with some leading with justice and trusting in God’s care and provision while others fell into corruption and idolatry. Regardless of their king, the people of the two kingdoms struggled to remain faithful to God. God’s commandments to care for the poor, pursue equality and fair treatment of laborers in an agrarian society, equitably distribute land and resources to all largely fell on deaf ears. While God had envisioned Israel being a source of blessing to all the nations of the world, they were no longer even blessing and caring for their own.
And hundreds of years into this pattern of division, corruption, injustice, and lack of faithfulness to God’s commandments, we arrive at the prophet Isaiah. Speaking to the southern kingdom, Isaiah warned of the consequences of the people’s unfaithfulness. At this time, the Assyrian empire was rapidly growing across the Middle East through military conquest and oppression and the Assyrian army had arrived at the borders of the kingdoms of Israel. The king of the northern kingdom allied with a neighboring nation to oppose the Assyrian expansion and suffered quick defeat with the tribes being scattered in exile. In self-preservation, the king of the southern kingdom sought Assyria’s help and protection, with the kingdom becoming a vassal state that was oppressed and exploited in exchange for not being conquered. For both the northern and southern kingdoms, their fates, while different, were equally crushing.
In a variety of ways, Isaiah is the story of the world crashing down around the people of Israel with the loss of communal, national, and religious identity. God’s people wondered if they had been forgotten by God, wondered if God had turned away from God’s promises, wondered if the future would just be the dark present replayed over and over. And it is out of that place of desolation and despair that we hear words of hope: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse (King David’s father), and a branch shall grow out of his roots… The wolf shall live with the lamb…they will not hurt or destroy…for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” A promise – a vision of a future of wholeness, peace, justice, and reconciliation. Even when life as we know it is turned on its head, when the world crashes down around us and lays in a heap of shattered dreams…there is hope for a different future. It is hope that invites us to look through the darkness to catch the first light of a new day that is sure to dawn. Hope that tells us that we are not forgotten by God, that the future is not just heartache set on repeat, but a promise worth living for.
That is the hope the people of God still held 700 years later when John the Baptist arrived on the scene to prepare the way for Jesus. No, all had not been made right with the world. It was still a place full of too much injustice, too much violence, too much loss, too much heartache. Isaiah’s vision of the future was still a pipe dream. But, John said, the day was soon coming when God’s promises would be fulfilled. The one who had been waited for all those years was soon to arrive. The shoot out of the stump of Jesse, Jesus, would soon bring about God’s kingdom – God’s dream for the world – here, now, in our midst. Hope would be fulfilled after all. And it was, in the birth of Jesus, in the first advent of Christ. God’s kingdom has come among us, friends, changing the entire course and hope of history.
But the reality is, the world today sounds a lot like the world into which Isaiah and John the Baptist spoke. We know all too well the feelings of being forgotten, we know the blow of disappointment. We see injustice all around us, the vulnerable are still oppressed, and violence is still the way of the world. We are caught in what seem like never ending cycles of political unrest and division. We are still waiting for and longing for that vision of a whole and reconciled world that Isaiah articulated. And so we wonder, is any of this hope true? The first advent of Christ has happened…but what difference has it actually made?
We oftentimes speak about hope, particularly in this season and particularly in the Church, as if it is something easy to summon, as if hope is in endless supply. Sometimes, the way we speak about hope – at least the implicit message – is something like “don’t worry about what you are going through, don’t worry about the hurts that are weighing you down, don’t look too closely at the that which is broken around you, just have hope.” But that is denial, not hope. Hope that is rich and deep doesn’t ignore brokenness in favor of a more pleasant feeling; it acknowledges and names that which is wrong, that which is broken, that which hurts.Hope doesn’t overlook the circumstances of the present, it names them, offers them to God, and then trusts that God is not done with us or our world. While Christian hope can easily be turned into empty optimism or cheap cheeriness, far removed from real human experience and pain, the hope of Advent is deeply rooted in the everyday experience and anxiety of life.
You see, while the first part of Isaiah’s vision was fulfilled in Jesus and makes the second part possible, we and all creation are still waiting. We live in what many theologians call the “time between the times” – between the first advent of Christ with the inauguration of God’s kingdom, and the second advent of Christ with the completion of God’s kingdom. That future where the wolf will lie down with the lamb, that future where violence and injustice are no more, where reconciliation is a reality rather than work in which to engage, those are the hopes of advent more than a baby in a manger.
I doubt it would be commercially successful, but perhaps a more appropriate advent calendar would be one that invites us to recognize and name our longings, confronts our disappointments, and reminds us of what in our lives and in our world needs redeeming. Because when we can name our suffering and the places in need of wholeness, it directs our gaze through the pain towards God’s promised future. As each advent comes and goes, followed by the promise of Christmas – it stands as a reminder that just as God’s promise of the Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus in the first advent, so too can we trust in God’s promise that Christ will return to finish the work of the kingdom. Advent reminds us that history is pregnant with the possibility of restoration and wholeness – that the kingdom of God is near.
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