So much around us focuses on moving forward, making progress, racing ahead, a linear pull to bigger and better things. But our story, creation's story, the story of God-with-us, seems more accurately described by a spiral, swirling from familiar territory to unexplored frontier, not tossing off the old, but seeing it in ever-shifting new light, moving higher, deeper, wider, a steady unfurling through eternity. Advent calls us to recollect this journey, our story as God's people, the where we have been, the where we are, and the where we will be.
It is a season of preparation and penitence; of acknowledging darkness and deliverance; of anticipating judgment and joy. The fences we put up to guard ourselves--from promises that are too big and hurts that are too deep--shudder and begin to fall. Hope blows in, a wild wind; we realize that the love of God is a persistent squatter, camped in our backyard all along.
November 29: A New Day
Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44
A monumental shift in geography is proclaimed, a change in the geography of our hearts as much as the Earth. We won't be able to ignore God any longer, Isaiah says, and we won't want to. We will eagerly embrace the lessons of peace; we will take up new tools for the trade.
But that doesn't mean that in the meantime we get to doze, to snuggle down under the covers and wrap ourselves in the comforting half-light of a day that's not quite here. If it were completely night perhaps we would be justified in sleeping, hoping that the violence, the famine, and the pain in this world and in our hearts were just nightmares. If it were completely day, the light would have chased all that haunts us away. But it is the between time and we have a part to play in the day's coming. We don't possess the power to stop that coming, but we do have the power to pull down the blinds and continue stumbling in the dark.
Times have come when everything is changed as radically as in a flood, houses and trees floating by, the land swept into new patterns. The time will come again. The Lord has come and is coming. The little spring trickling through your heart is cause for hope and attentiveness. The waters gather slowly, but surely.
Heads up! On this day we are called to wake up and watch for Jesus, not by looking nervously over our shoulder or heading for a high hill to sit and wait, but by paying attention to the details of our lives, our work and our play, our love and our hate, our courage and our fear. We are given strength to see and confront the ways we cling to the night or assist others to. Can we see the light that shines in the faces all around us? Can we celebrate the new ways God has already opened up?
December 6: Firmly Planted
Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
Roots and branches. Nurture and harvest. Paul assures the church in Rome and us that we are a people that should be fully planted, that the stories and prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures are rich soil that we can root ourselves in. Doused in the cleansing water of confession and forgiveness and nourished with God's promises, we will produce sweet fruit--harmony, joy, and peace.
But intertwined in these scriptures is also the promise of judgment. John the Baptist, wild-eyed and knee-deep in the waters of the Jordan, predicts a destroying fire for those who are not producing the right kind of fruit. God the gentle gardener suddenly seems to be the angry and merciless groundskeeper, slashing and burning all that isn't quite up to snuff.
Despite John's roughness with the Pharisees and Sadducees, they probably weren't what we would consider bad people. They were pious, reverent, serious about their faith, trying to do what was right. We too want to assure ourselves that judgment is only for the truly and shamelessly wicked. We hope that by standing in the correct causes, the correct faith, the correct ideology, or the correct lifestyle, we will be safe from the fire; we hope that when the winnowing fork goes to flailing, we'll land safely in the granary.
But there is always a hint of fire in true repentance, a purifying that goes deeper than water. Bearing the fruit of the gospel is a process, not an instantaneous gift. Our assurance isn't in being in the right, but in being raised up toward God--pruned with fire, watered with the grace of the Holy Spirit.
December 13: The Long Haul
Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
Patience, already! Calm your hearts, steady your knocking knees, remember that we're in this for the long haul, not the quick fix. You can't rush the rain and you can't live without it, the author of James reminds us. And the long wait is no excuse for bickering with one another--it's not just that you wait, but how you wait that counts to God.
God's coming is marked with joy splashing down on our heads and bubbling up at our feet. The barren ground becomes lush and verdant; the wounded are healed, the grieving laugh and frolic. Patience seems unbearably boring in comparison; we want to strain toward that day, to hasten the coming.
Our tension is increased by the paradox of Advent--Christ has come, is here, is yet to come. Jesus cites his healing work to John the Baptist's followers as evidence that he, Jesus, is indeed the Messiah whom John has been proclaiming. You can imagine that perhaps they were a little disappointed. Where were the cosmic fireworks, the overthrown government, the lights and action?
God's healing work has begun. God's healing work continues. God's healing work will be complete. We are called to be participants in that work, whether by raging with righteous anger or bearing the soothing balm. At times it is mind-numbingly dull; at times it demands nothing less than our life. Usually it's somewhere in between, peppered with bad days and good, shared with people we love and people who annoy us and people who we both love and are annoyed by. To be a patient people is a test in and of itself; but it is not at all the same thing as being passive.
December 20: An Imprudent Hope
Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
The Lord says through Isaiah, "Ask for any sign, anything!" and Ahaz--whether from tact, cowardice, or smug self-assurance--won't ask, holds back, demurs. Isaiah scoffs impatiently and assures Ahaz that, even if he's not ready, what he's going to get as a sign is the very presence of God. Or at least a baby with the infinitely hopeful name--Immanuel, "God with us." A helpless bundle of flesh that represents the steadfastness of the infinite God. A promise that seems at once inconsequential and overwhelming.
Joseph assumes the only thing that seems possible about Mary's pregnancy, plans to do the prudent thing (in the most discreet way), and goes to sleep secure in his practicality. He is awakened by an angel assuring him of what seems unlikely, if not impossible--the Holy Spirit dabbling in conception, an infant who would be a savior, the instruction that the prudent thing to do would be the absolutely wrong thing to do.
Paul greets the church in Rome with a salutation that bursts at the grammatical seams with all that Jesus, the promise of God, means for them and for us. God with us, among us, the reason for our faith, the source of grace and peace, calling us to be saints, claiming us as children.
Our tendency is to try to keep things simple, manageable, and prudent. We want to focus on bucolic scenes of mother and child or images of a kind but remote God. We may acknowledge the "Mystery of Incarnation," but we try to keep it in the abstract, such a mystery that it's best not to think about it too much. But "God with us" is neither practical nor sentimental nor distant. To live in that truth is nothing less than to claim all ground as holy ground, to see the messy work of being human as God's work too, to have our ends and means flipped and tested. Nothing's obvious anymore, but all is potentially blessed.
December 27: Down and Dirty
Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:1-10, 18; Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
The Christmas carol lyrics describe "angels we have heard on high," but the more accurate point seems to be that not just angels but God as well have always gotten down and dirty. It was the angel of God's presence that sustained and redeemed the people of Israel throughout their rough and rocky history--not a remote-controlled spiritual fix-it job, but hands reaching down into the rubble of Israel's (often self-imposed) failures to pick them up and carry them on.
We forget sometimes that the people in scriptures were real, once-upon-a-time, not just Bible character cutouts moving stiffly across a pastel-colored map of the Holy Land. Maybe some details have gotten shuffled with the retelling of the stories, but nonetheless at some point there were real hearts pumping fast with fear and joy, hands doing their work, minds fretting and plotting. Matthew has neatly summarized the escape of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to Egypt and their return to Nazareth so that it seems to be no more fuss than an impromptu trip to the park. But slow it down, fill in the gaps with the worries Mary and Joseph must have had. How will we live, eat, and shelter ourselves in Egypt? How will we protect our boy from all the dangers of the world? Will we make it safely?
When scripture proclaims God's presence in our affliction and our suffering, it's not just a presence in our "spiritual" struggles--it's God-with-us in daily life, whether it's filled with the routine or the extraordinary, small victories or great tragedies. The incarnation of Jesus is a mystery, surely, but it is a mud-splattered and humble mystery.
We may think the only trick is to remember and believe in the grandeur of God, the miracles, the road to Damascus conversions, and the angelic choirs. Perhaps the harder trick is to remember and believe in the steady, sturdy part of salvation, the work-roughened hands holding us up.
Julie Polter is associate editor of Sojourners.
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