Rescuing the powerless

Can we make room for Advent’s good news?

Not all Christian denominations observe the four Sundays before Christmas as the season of Advent, but many do. Advent is a season of expectation, the expectation of the coming of Christ. Traditionally we speak of the three comings of Christ: past, present and future. We prepare for the commemoration of Christmas when we remember the coming of Christ in his birth at Bethlehem. We open our hearts for the renewing presence of Christ in our lives here and now. And we anticipate the coming of God’s reign when the whole earth embraces the compassion and justice that Christ draws us toward as our future.

The Advent scriptures focus particularly on three voices: Jesus’ mother Mary, John the Baptizer and the prophets who announce God’s hopes for humanity.

It is Advent and the church is pregnant. We hear the voice of Mary, a peasant woman inconveniently expecting her firstborn. She sings a song of radical reversals when the proud will be scattered and the lowly lifted up; the hungry filled and the rich sent away empty. (Luke 1:4655)

We hear the voice of John telling his confident listeners that they have lost their way; they are no more Jewish than the Gentiles. “Change your thinking!” he said. And he baptized lifelong Jews as though they were Gentiles. Baptism was part of the initiation process for Gentile proselytes who were becoming Jews.

We hear the voice of the prophets, anticipating the coming of God’s reign in human history, a reign of justice and peace. We also hear Jesus speaking in the tradition of the prophets.

Many churches use the Revised Common Lectionary for their scripture readings. On the first Sunday in Advent we listened to Jesus speaking of signs of distress, fear and foreboding. When this change begins, Jesus tells us, do not be afraid. “Stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is coming near.”

The Advent message corresponds to the consistent Biblical message that God is acting to rescue and save the powerless. God’s focus is continually on the poor and marginalized, the widow and orphan and alien. God promises to make them safe and secure.

Now that is good news (literally “Gospel”) for the poor and marginalized, but it is a challenge to people like me. I am wealthy and privileged. White, male, native-born to a middle-class, educated family. An Advent reversal of power requires me to “Change your thinking!” My pride could use some scattering, and I need no more material comfort.

It was the poor who welcomed Jesus’ message, and it was people like me who resisted him. Whose side will I be on as God’s reign approaches?

My successor at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Evan Garner, asked this in his 1 Advent sermon:

“Who in today’s world would hear the news that the nations are in an uproar and the powers of the heavens are being shaken as good news? To whom does that message come as a proclamation of hope? Is it not the victim of abuse who for years has been silenced by men in positions of power over her and her family? Is it not the person among us who suffers from mental illness whose care was long ago abdicated by a society that would rather spend its tax dollars in celebration of its own prosperity than caring for the least among them? Is it not the incarcerated African-American who followed the path from school to prison that was appointed for him by those who refuse to see beyond the labels that our dominant society affixes to young men of color? It is not the caravan of migrant men and women and children, who fled their homeland because the evil powers of the drug trade threatened their lives and whose hope for resettlement has been met with tear gas at the United States border?”

Mary’s “yes” made room in her womb for an inconvenient pregnancy. People like me need to make room in our lives and in our economy for neighbors who do not enjoy the same power, privilege and security we enjoy. Jesus said God’s judgment turns on our service toward “the least of these” — the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. (Matthew 25)