Dear Folks,
Every Advent, John the Baptist bursts onto the scene with righteous indignation, fiery confidence, and a plan. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? The One who is coming is going to clean house. God’s law will be the law of the land. Our enemies will be vanquished, and our man will sit on the throne. The Temple’s power will be challenged and rectified… Clean living will replace parties. Up with locusts and honey, down with wine and cheese!” John seems convinced that the One he is heralding will set the record straight, with a strong arm and unquenchable fire.
You can see why he would want this kind of Messiah: like the prophet Elijah, John has squared off against the royal authority and suffered for it. Eight chapters after his stirring opening salvo, John will be locked up in Herod’s prison for protesting the King’s marriage to his own sister-in-law. I imagine John hoped that Jesus would stick up for him, perhaps making a public protest against his unjust punishment or taking up the cause against Herod’s unlawful coupling. He doesn’t. John wants God or somebody to fix things, but the Holy One we call Jesus invites us to healing, instead.
“The kingdom is coming, and is here now,” Jesus says, but it doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before. Barbara Brown Taylor describes the tension this way: “While John ate locusts in the wilderness, Jesus was turning water to wine at a wedding in Cana; while John crossed the street to avoid traffic with sinners, Jesus sought them out and invited himself home to eat with them… while John spent his whole life warning people to repent and save their souls… what they were really called to do was to love one another. Over and over John handed Jesus the ax, urging him to strike at the rotten wood of the world, and over and over Jesus declined, pointing out the new growth, the green places” that we often cannot or will not see. (Mixed Blessings, Taylor)
No person or power will swoop in to save us; rather, the kingdom of God is in our hearts and in our hands. We know that valleys of despair need to be lifted up, and that mountains built by greed need to be leveled, but that saving work is ours to do, with Spirit as frame and guide and nourishment. There is no quick fix, only the long road of reconciliation.
So we wipe our noses and hang onto each other: chop wood, carry water, and hope against hope. The way I understand the Incarnation, God is with us and in us, and we are each other’s last, best hope, if this old world is ever going to be made new. And this Advent hope should not be confused with fragile optimism. Real hope does not maintain denial. In fact, hope requires a “courageous facing of death and vulnerability.” (Martin Smith) Hope is not about making excuses, for God or anyone else. According to Irishman Vincent McNabb, hope is “some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to handle our fears, but not to oust them.” Distilling hope is about the creation of meaning where you were sure there was none to be found. Hope knows that however dark the night may be, that new life comes in the morning, even when the dawn is forestalled.
True hope is about never cutting corners, never confusing product with process, never letting the means justify the ends. Hope is about choosing love instead of fear, about embracing non-violence and seeing it through, about helping to create a world where power is not merely exchanged from one army to another but redefined altogether… finally power with and not power over. Hope is about being open enough to believe that there can be something new under the sun, and then working to reveal it.
Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free; from our fear and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art: dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.
Love,
David