Advent and the Kingdom Coming: Emptiness is Fullness

Last night I ran into a former student of mine at an event downtown, where she reminded me that it's Advent. Sadly, I needed this reminder. I've been so busy trying to survive the end of the semester that I've almost forgotten to read my daily experiences through Advent. Which is exactly what I'm arguing in the book that we shouldn't do in any season. Ideally, we should let the narrative of the liturgical season frame how we see the world. Instead, I've all too often let the Flat World define me.

All is not lost, however. This week I've also been talking with a student who is depressed about the brokenness of the world. I share her tendency to be overwhelmed by both history and current events, seeing how much violence, death, destruction, and oppression has occurred and still occurs every day, all around the globe. There's often little sign that God's Kingdom is ruling. "The world is so screwed up!" said this student.

But this is exactly where we should be in Advent:  We should be frustrated with the brokenness. We should be experiencing the "lonely exile here," as evoked in the haunting Advent hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." We should be hungering for God's rule to arrive here on earth as in heaven. We should be longing for God's shalom (peace, justice, righteousness) to be restored.

This is what it means to experience the Fullness of Time right now--a Fullness that means entering into the Emptiness of the Hebrew people longing for a return from exile, the Emptiness that Christ experienced in the Incarnation (Phil 2:7), and the Emptiness that the disciples experienced after the Crucifixion.

In morning prayer on Tuesday, Psalm 74:19 jumped out and spoke of the Emptiness of exile: "Look upon your covenant; the dark places of the earth are haunts of violence."

As we ponder these dark places and their haunts of violence, we can pray for the restoration of the covenant: for a return from exile, for redemption of the world, and for resurrection to eternal life. Experiencing the depths of this brokenness just points us back to the story that begins with Advent. We long for the Kingdom to come and the Fullness of God's reign to begin.

Come quickly, Lord.

When Time Slows Down

Third in a series (first post on Christmas)

It's the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, a time when many (though not all) Americans can lay around the house guilt-free. You get a chance to pause and spend time with family or friends. And much of the time you are feasting, eating all kinds of goodies in between large meals and festive parties. Time slows down during these holidays.

Like Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day is one of the only society-wide feast days in the United States. Feast days are those that break from the normal 24/7/365 work world of Western consumer society. Even fast food chains and gas stations close on Thanksgiving Day and December 25. There are no other days where this would fly. But on these days we understand and make an exception.

****
Over the break, I've been reading several of the books that I mentioned in my last post. Among them, Colin Beavan in No Impact Man talks about eating dinners with his grandparents who were both extremely frugal and extraordinarily attentive to the natural world around them.

 They insisted I climb back up the stairs to the bathroom to turn the light of if if I'd left it on. They taught me to take only what food I would eat and never to throw trash on the ground. They wore sweaters and kept the heat down low (p. 36).

They also took their time eating dinner, waiting until after sunset to start. After dinner,

when my grandmother washed the dishes, I would stand beside her and we'd look out the window together at the New England stone wall in her backyard. Chipmunks had burrowed there. "That's the father," my grandmother would say. "Those are the babies." The birds would come. A red-winged blackbird, Grannie would tell me. A goldfinch (p. 42).

Looking back, he thinks that gratitude connects their frugality and their attentiveness toward Creation:

My grandparents' no-waste rules seemed pointless when I was young. You should this. You shouldn't that. And for the sake of . . . what? Piety? Sanctimony? But something about their intention not to waste and their emphasis on cultivating gratitude--Depression-era thoughts or not--seems connected to making time to watch the sunset and the chipmunks (p. 43).

The slower time of a feast season like Christmas brings us closer to the fullness of time--kairos time--where we can appreciate more deeply the gifts of God's Son and God's Creation given for us and for our salvation. Thanksgiving is the general posture of the entire twelve days of the Christmas season.
****
Today, December 28, is the Feast of Commemoration of the Holy Innocents, which reminds us of how those gifts are not to be taken for granted. When Herod's soldiers slaughtered the young children of Bethlehem (see Matthew 2:13-18), they created a stark reminder in the Christian calendar that our gratitude for the gifts of God necessarily involves concern for others. The Episcopal Collect for this day makes this link explicit:

We remember this day, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by the order of King Herod. Receive, we beseech thee, into the arms of thy mercy all innocent victims; and by thy great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish thy rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

This emphasis--mercy for innocent victims, justice for the oppressors--builds on the Advent theme of the Kingdom. Even as we celebrate during this season the good gifts we have received, we long for the day when there will be no more injustice, when God's Kingdom will reign here on earth.

Advent: There Are Alternatives

Second in a series on the seasons

"There is no alternative" to globalization. It is inevitable. You may not like it, but there is nothing you can do about it. If you oppose globalization, you are opposed to human progress. All of these are common beliefs among those who track globalization. (See Thomas Friedman's books on globalization.) Bob Goudzwaard once lumped these beliefs together under the TINA (There Is No Alternative) label.

But one of the main lessons of Advent is that God breaks into human history to redeem His people in unexpected ways. We are not abandoned or alone. So we hope. We wait for the Lord. We know that someday the Kingdom will be fully and finally established on earth. Now, there is an alternative.

When I first started writing on globalization, I hadn't yet internalized this lesson of Advent. Nor had I read enough about hopeful practices that demonstrate practical alternatives to globalization. Instead, I tended to share the assumption that globalization was a juggernaut that operated whether or not we liked it.

Now, by Advent 2010, a number of authors have demonstrated the power of alternative practices in their own personal, individual journeys. They show us that even the individual alone can do things (not to mention whole communities).

There are authors who track down the laborers who toil to stitch our clothes:

• Kelsey Timmerman, Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People That Make Our Clothes (2009)
• Joe Bennett, Where Underpants Come From: From Cotton Fields to Checkout Counters --Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy (2009) 
• Pietra Rivoli, Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy (2005)

There are authors who eat locally for a year:

• Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet (2008)
• Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2008)
• Bill McKibben, Deep Economy (2008)

There are authors who live with less technology or with minimal environmental impact:

• Eric Brende, Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology (2004)
• Colin Beavan, No Impact Man (2009)
• Doug Fine, Farewell, My Subaru (2008)

There are authors who learn to minimize their consumption (in general or of "Made in China") for a year:

•  Judith Levine, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping (2007)
• Sara Bongiorni, A Year Without "Made in China" (2007)

There are authors who investigate child labor and slave labor practices that go into making our stuff:

• Craig Kielburger, Free the Children (1998)
• John Bowe, Nobodies: American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the Global Economy (2008)

There are authors who practice nonviolent ways of reconciling differences in Iraq or Afghanitsan

• Peggy Gish, Iraq: A Journey of Hope and Peace (2004)
• Greg Mortenson, Stones into Schools (2009)

I could go on, but hopefully the point is clear.

There Are Alternatives.

An Advent Parable

Advent is just about over, but there is still time to start the practice of blogging on each liturgical season, during that season. So here goes the first installment of an occasional series. . .

Last Sunday evening, on the Third Sunday of Advent, a student of mine was driving with friends to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in downtown Canton for a special service of Advent meditations, music, and visual art. As the sun was setting, the weather was turning cold and nasty, with bitter Arctic winds and snow swirling around. As the guys drove down Market Avenue, a major four-lane thoroughfare, they saw an older woman walking against the flow of traffic, scuffling along the gutter of the street with her walker, nearly sliding into the path of oncoming cars. She wasn't wearing a coat or decent shoes. She was clearly disoriented. 

So, God bless them, they stopped their car and returned her to the nursing home from which she had wandered. As a result, they arrived at the Advent service quite late, unable to enjoy it fully.

One of the young men was deeply upset, overcome with the injustice of a system that discards the elderly and cares little for them. This particular woman was obviously overlooked at this particular nursing home, which is not exactly posh -- a forgotten woman in a forgotten place. As the student sat in the Advent service, he was crying in frustration. He confessed that he wasn't able to focus on the service because he was so overcome with the injustice of it all.

But he had had just lived through an Advent parable. 

After all, this is the season in which we cry "come, Lord Jesus, come." The tears of that young man were properly Advent tears--the tears of a season in which we lament the injustice and oppression of this world while yearning for justice and liberation.

On this Third Sunday of Advent, Isaiah's prophetic vision was read out loud in many churches around the world:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert (Isaiah 35:5-6). 

Advent is the time when we recall that we are longing, like Isaiah and Mary, for God to redeem his people, to put things right, to rescue us, to heal us, to bring us back to Zion, to bring justice, and to liberate us all from the yoke of spiritual, physical, social, political, or economic oppression. We say "come, Lord Jesus, come," because we hope he will return to make things right.

But in the meantime, we live in a fallen world that often lacks this healing. In between Christ's first and second Advents, between the "already" of the Kingdom and the "not yet," we wait. 

Wait for the Lord, whose day is near

Wait for the Lord 

Be strong, take heart.

These words from one of my favorite Taize songs remind us to wait patiently for the Lord, even while we, like my student, impatiently long for God to reign on earth as He already does in Heaven. 

Marantha. Come, Lord.