It’s Advent! The season of Coming has come. Advent comes as a welcome change after months of Ordinary Time. It shifts our focus from mundane patterns of daily discipleship to what’s coming, and there’s the rub. Advent comes on the heels of Black Friday and easily gets lost in the commercial melee called “the Holiday Season.” Even we who wait through Advent for the Feast of the Incarnation may see it as little more than preparation for the Christ Mass. It is that, of course, but it is more, much more.
If Advent were nothing more than a warm-up for Christmas, it would hardly start as it does today. It would enter gently, like a lamb. We would steal on muffled shoe to the manger. But that’s not what today’s lessons do. Instead, Advent roars in like a blizzard.
Isaiah envisions a crowd of many peoples as all the nations throng to the mountain of the LORD’s house. Why do they come? They come to learn the LORD’s ways. Their desire is to walk in the LORD’s paths.
Let’s pause here to reflect on how backward this may seem to us. We typically think of learning and doing God’s will so that we might please God and gain an eternal reward. Isaiah sees learning and doing God’s will as the substance of our hope, as itself the reward, not the means of obtaining it. God’s kingdom subsists in the learning and doing of God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven. And what is the outcome? Swords beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks – nevermore to be lifted against another. When we learn God’s ways, we shall never again learn war or hatred or vengeance. An earth in which God’s will is done is the end we seek.
The Psalm also recalls crowds making their way to the LORD’s house. Mass gatherings are rarely quiet. They rumble and growl through the streets, a cacophony of shouts or laughter or anger, sometimes augmented by drum or brass or foghorn and too often violent and destructive.
If we relate these lessons to the church, as early interpreters did, Isaiah might evoke the clamor of Pentecost, the church’s noisy birthday. The Psalm’s prayer for the peace of Jerusalem might remind us of the church’s deafening conflicts and schisms. The church is not a city at unity with itself. Notwithstanding the yearning in these passages, our entry into Advent is hardly quiet or peaceable.
The din of Advent does not soften as we turn to Paul and Matthew. Both anticipate, not the quietness of the manger, but the return of Christ at the consummation of the age. Both urge alertness. Both call the church to wake up and stay awake.
Matthew is particularly noisy, for there Jesus recalls the great flood that tumbled across the earth in the days of Noah and caught people by surprise. There also Jesus likens our watching to the wakefulness of a householder who awaits the advent of a thief in the night.
The turbulence increases as we pull back to view the context of Jesus’ words. They are part of a larger discourse, one spoken privately to the disciples. What triggers it is Jesus’ warning that the grandeur and beauty of the Jerusalem Temple will not last. As Babylonians devastated the Temple of Isaiah’s day, so Romans will demolish the Temple of their day. Not one stone will be left upon another. This prediction prompts the disciples to ask: “When will these things happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the consummation of the age?”
Jesus’ response fills two long chapters. He warns the disciples of terrors to come, wars, famines, earthquakes, persecutions, desolations, deceptions, and sacrilege.
He does not, however, answer their question. He sets no time, nor does he offer signs. Rather he says that no one knows the time, neither the angels nor the Son himself, but only the Father. In Matthew, it is difficult to separate Jesus’ warnings of the Temple’s destruction from the promise of his return. It takes the church a while to discern that these are not the same event. In either case, however, Jesus’ message is clear: be ready, be alert, stay awake!
These images disturb. They do not calm. They do not bring the Advent serenity we so desire, and they leave us with troubling questions: How do we watch for something that we cannot see till it is upon us? What does alertness look like as we stare into the dark? And there is the matter of sleep deprivation. Don’t Paul and Jesus know that long wakefulness soon renders us less alert, more vulnerable to delusion and fractiousness? Can we remain vigilant without falling into corrosive hypervigilance?
Let’s see if we can sort this out. If we take a bird’s-eye view of what Paul says and of what follows in Jesus’ discourse, we see that, for all their attention to waiting and watching for what is coming, both focus sharply on how we wait. Everything they say about wakefulness and alertness boils down to how we live as we wait.
Paul recognizes that life in Christ today and life in Christ when he returns is one life. The life we live by faith is the same life that we shall live face-to-face with our redeemer. The life for which we hope when he returns is the same life we live in hope of his return. From initiation to consummation, this one life is nourished and sustained, not by our vigilance, but by the mercy and grace and compassion of our Creator, who is our beginning and our end, our source and our destination.
Both Paul and Jesus recognize that distractions fill the world, bright, shiny trinkets more immediate and more alluring than any unseen hope. If we succumb to these distractions, we lose our grip on life in Christ, and we sink back into the dissipation from which Christ has delivered us. When we stake our lives on distractions, like possessions, power, privilege, and pleasure, we deprive our-selves of the real stuff of life – faith, hope, and love. In the process, we do ap-palling harm to ourselves and to others, we ravage the creation, and we forget the face of Christ. We forget what we are waiting for.
The rhetoric of Jesus and Paul exudes urgency because the danger is real and immediate. Christ is always coming to us with the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and we always risk missing his coming, as we gorge ourselves with bread that does not fill and drink that does not quench. Christ is always coming to us in the face of neighbor, stranger, and enemy, and we risk missing his coming as we put our desires ahead of their welfare.
This danger is nowhere more evident than in the parable that ends the discourse from which today’s Gospel comes. When the Son of Man comes, he will gather all nations and will separate them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. To the sheep, he will say, “Come, blessed ones, inherit the kingdom, for I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a foreigner and you welcomed me, I was naked, and you clothed me, I was sick, and you cared for me ….” You know the rest of the story.
Here then is the urgency of the matter, here the necessity of vigilance: it is that, when Christ comes to us in the myriad faces of humanity, we be alert to recognize and embrace him in each and every one, for if we cannot see and love him in the faces of our fellow humans, how shall we see and love him when he comes again? How shall we yearn for his coming?
“Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace. Amen.”
Advent 1A: Isa 2:1-5; Ps 122; Rom 13:11-14; Mt 24:36-44
In Matthew, both John and Jesus begin their ministries proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” Later, the apostles continue the call to repentance.
John’s call to repentance is harsh. The kingdom of God is drawing near, and when the king arrives, he will fell unfruitful trees and throw them into the fire. He will winnow the chaff from the grain and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Matthew quotes Isaiah to characterize the ministries of both John and Jesus. John is a “voice … crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight.’” When Jesus settles in Galilee, “the people who sat in great darkness [see] a great light ….”
These quotations suggest a shift in tone from John to Jesus. Jesus preaches the good news of the kingdom, while John’s message is “get your lives in order; the king’s coming.” There is surely good news in his preaching, but it’s hard to detect. John sounds like Amos: “Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear ….” Lest we think that Jesus is a nicer guy than John, however, stay tuned. Before this year of Matthew ends, there will be plenty of “fire” on Jesus’ lips.
Yet, I suggest that, despite their distinctives, both mean the same thing by “repent.”
For both, repentance is more than penitence. It is more than remorse for misdeeds, more than saying, “I’m sorry.” Of course, sorrow attends repentance, sometimes triggering it, sometimes arising from it, but repentance is more.
For both Jesus and John, to repent is to experience a changed mind, an altered way of thinking and feeling, a clearer vision of reality, a transformation of desire.
This meaning is implicit in John’s rebuke of some who come for baptism: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath to come? … Do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor ….’” Quit thinking that your status in the world garners status in the kingdom.
This understanding is also implicit in Jesus’ first sermon. The Beatitudes introduce that sermon. They describe a startling way of thinking that reverses human perspectives on what is desirable. Take a couple of examples: “Blessed are the poor in spirit ….” “Blessed are those who mourn ….” That’s not how we think about humility or mourning, is it? But Jesus says that mourning opens us to comfort, and that’s a blessing. Poverty of spirit opens us to the kingdom. Each Beatitude reverses human expectations. To repent is to buy into this backward view of reality with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Let’s not confuse repentance with a simple intellectual shift. It is not driven by the intellect. Repentance does its work in the core of our being, in the very seat of emotion, intellect, and desire, in our heart. Hence, a recent translation substitutes “Change your hearts,” for “Repent.”
Neither should we make the mistake of some who come to John solely to escape the coming wrath. They should come seeking changed lives, not to avoid wrath, but to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” True penitence arises not from fear of punishment but from desire, from yearning to live the life of God. John’s message, for all its harshness, is not about escaping. It is about flourishing, as a tree planted by living waters, bearing its fruit in season. Repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit in us, through us, and for us. Its result is thinking, feeling, and desiring shaped by faith, hope, and love. It yields fruit in the way we live, particularly in how we treat one another, the rest of humanity, and the whole creation.
Isaiah portrays the fruit of repentance poetically: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them…. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea….” God comes to change our thinking, to fill us with deep-seated knowledge that God’s ways are not our ways and with overwhelming desire for God’s ways.
Hearing Isaiah, we might suppose that changing our minds, preparing our hearts for God’s coming, is not so hard. How hard is it to prepare for abundance? Do we not long for a speedy end to hurt and destruction? Do not the poor pant for equity in prosperity and defense against exploitation? Who isn’t ready for permanent, perfect peace? Our hearts swell as we hear Isaiah. Surely, we are prepared!
Not so fast! If we think that our longing perfects our preparation, we deceive ourselves. It is painless to long for that which costs us nothing. As we listen to Isaiah, we imagine ourselves the lamb, no longer prey to the wolf. We see ourselves as the kid, cuddling that magnificent leopard. We hear Isaiah, and we assume that we are the ones who shall no longer suffer hurt, and we are quite ready for the pain to stop.
But there is more to being ready for God’s coming. Might you or I be wolf or lion or viper? Might those who come to John for washing? Do those who crucify Jesus see themselves as evildoers? Can it be easy for carnivores to prepare for life as vegetarians? The carnivores among us – indeed, the carnivore in each of us is not ready to cease from hurting and destroying, for thereby we survive.
Here is our dilemma. We pray, longing for God to stop our hurting, but are we ready for God to stop our hurtfulness? Do we say to ourselves, “We are members of Christ; we don’t hurt anyone; we are immune to the great winnowing?”
Our lesson from Romans addresses this issue in the context of congregational life. Paul writes to people like us, people drawn to God, people whose hearts the Holy Spirit has filled with God’s love. They know themselves as people whom God accepts while they are still sinners, whom God welcomes while they are still weak. They know themselves as sinners for whom Christ died, justified by his faithfulness, not their own. They know themselves as lambs or kids or calves, nursing children saved from the serpent’s venom.
Yet, they make hurtful distinctions among themselves. Some regard others as weak, and hence inferior, because of their scruples. The scrupulous regard their critics as unholy for their lack of scruples. They despise and judge one another. They despise and judge those whom God has wel-comed.
It matters not which issues or scruples divide these Christians, but it does help to understand that their divisions are rooted in difference, personal, cultural, and theological difference. Both sides cite Scripture to support their judgments. If they are biting and devouring one another, they are just doing what Scripture requires. They turn Scripture, by which God gives hope and encouragement, into a weapon.
As we read Romans, it is not clear who is lamb and who is wolf, who is child and who is copperhead. The longer I sit with Paul’s admonitions, the more convinced I am that each side is both predator and prey, both hurter and hurt, both destroyer and destroyed, and this within the body of Christ! What damage must they do in their neighborhoods! How often we today ignore Paul’s charge to the Roman church, convinced that the truth of the Gospel depends on our correctness!
Paul never says that one is right and the other wrong. Rather, he calls both to practice the fundamental ethic of the kingdom, to reform their thinking about rightness and wrongness, about who is in and who is out. What is that ethic?
“Welcome one another … as Christ has welcomed you ….”
“Receive one another … as Christ has received you ….”
“Embrace one another … as Christ has embraced you ….”
This is the arduous work of preparing for our Lord’s coming. Until our deepest yearning is abundance for our competitors …. Until our most persistent longing is peace for our enemies …. Until we embrace the stranger as warmly as we embrace flesh and blood or fellow citizens, we are not ready for our Lord. How can we be ready for Christ if we reject, stigmatize, or marginalize any whom Christ embraces?
Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we are not ready for your coming and that, when you come, we will survive your winnowing solely by your grace, for you call before we seek, you welcome before we welcome, you receive before we receive, you embrace before we embrace, and you forgive before we forgive. Even so, come, Lord Jesus, consume our chaff, and bear fruit in us and through us! Amen.
Advent 2A: Ps 72:1-7, 18-19; Isa 11:1-10; Rom 15:4-13; Mt 3:1-12
Before I was a priest, I was a lawyer, a professional in the business of justice. The legal profession’s symbol is a statue called “Lady Justice.” Her right hand rests on the hilt of a sword. Her left holds a balance. A blindfold covers her eyes. Lawyers claim that justice is blind. The law, we say, knows no favorites. It matters not who you are or whether you are rich or poor, the law treats you the same. Now, you may doubt the accuracy of this claim. You may find it downright laughable. Yet, it is a worthy aspiration for a system of justice. People in authority should not show favoritism. We apply this principle to government, to church leaders, and to parents. We believe that there can be no justice where there is bias or favoritism.
It came, therefore, as a shock when I heard that some theologians say that God has a preferential option for the poor, that God is biased in favor of the poor and shows favoritism to the dispossessed and the stranger, that God takes the side of poor people against those who impoverish them and keep them poor, that God holds marginalized people at the very center of God’s agenda for the creation, which the Bible calls “the kingdom of God.”
These claims may upset us. We may even think them heretical, for they aver that God is biased, that God has favorites, that God is a partisan.
I found these claims troubling at first. Now, I wonder what Bible I had been reading. I was, of course, reading the same Bible I read now, but I was reading it blindfolded, my vision obscured by privilege, prosperity, and the mindset of communities in which I came of age. There was more to my blindness, however. I had an overly spiritualized view of God’s kingdom. I was so focused on my personal salvation from sin and going to heaven when I die that I gave short shrift to God’s mission to heal the world. Our Jewish siblings call this mission tikkun olam. That is Hebrew for “repair of the world.”
When I returned to the Bible after hearing the claim that God has a preferential option for the poor, for the sick, for the stranger, for the marginalized, I found the Bible filled with affirmations of the priority of dispossessed, marginalized, and stigmatized people in the divine economy.
Take, for example, today’s lessons. The Psalm declares that the Lord gives justice to people who are oppressed and food to those who are hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free and opens the eyes of blind people. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord cares for the stranger and sustains the orphan and the widow.
The Song of Mary, the Magnificat, is an alternative for today’s Psalm. It declares that God scatters the proud in their conceit and casts down the mighty. It proclaims that the very greatness of God consists not only in God’s lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things but also in God’s sending the rich away empty and casting the mighty down from their lofty perches.
Isaiah puts flesh on the bones of God’s repair of the world: The eyes of blind people shall be opened, and ears of deaf people unstopped. Lame persons shall leap like a deer, and the speechless sing for joy. God strengthens weak hands and makes feeble knees firm. God’s message to the fearful of heart is “be strong, do not fear!”
Someone might say, “But that’s about spiritual renewal, spiritual healing, spiritual cleansing.” And it is. Isaiah clearly has in mind hearts that do not perceive what God is doing or hear what God is saying, minds so dull with self-indulgence that they cannot grasp God’s way of loving. But there is much more. These words of encouragement speak to people in earthly captivity and desperation. They promise return from Babylonian Captivity.
When John asks whether Jesus is the one promised, Jesus sends John’s disciples back with these words: “‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.’”
The signs of God’s coming are not that the rich get richer, or the mighty gain more power, or the famous achieve greater celebrity. Rather, the signs that God has returned to Israel in the person of Jesus are concrete, physical acts of healing, deliverance, and feeding. We err greatly when we divorce spiritual from physical or physical from spiritual.
When we limit God’s healing and restorative work to what we call the “spiritual,” we ignore the Law and the Prophets, and we abandon faith in the Incarnation of God in the flesh of Jesus. When God becomes flesh and dwells among us, God’s flesh validates life in the flesh, God’s dust declares the sanctity of our dust. When God becomes flesh, God becomes poor and weak, thirsty and hungry, wounded and mortal, just like us. Like us, God-in-flesh needs sustenance, strengthening, and healing.
God says it in the beginning: All this dust, all this flesh, all this creation is good, very good. In the flesh of Jesus, God affirms the goodness of this creation of dust, including our flesh of dust.
The bottom line is this: God made us, body, soul, and spirit. God loves us, body, soul, and spirit. God keeps us, body, soul, and spirit.
If our bodies suffer the deprivation of poverty, God suffers and God cares.
If our bodies suffer the ruination of oppression, God suffers and God cares.
If the world stigmatizes our bodies and despises our flesh because of disease or disorder, mental or physical, God suffers and God cares.
If our bodies are detained and imprisoned because we are strangers in a foreign land, God suffers and God cares.
If our muscles and joints ache for love and dignity and friendship, God suffers and God cares.
Yes, God suffers and God cares, and God calls us to care just as God cares and to be God’s suffering, caring presence in the world. To borrow words attributed to St. Teresa of Avila,
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
God is on the side of the needy and against any who beat them down. God is biased in favor of giving the needy what they need. God is biased against all who secure privilege, power, or possessions at the expense of neighbors, strangers, or enemies. God is biased against all who, in their grasping for these treasures, neglect the needs of the world.
But let us not forget the neediness of the wealthy, the weakness of the powerful, or the shame of the glamorous. To say that God has a preferential option for the poor is, in fact, to say that God loves us all equally and fully. The harm done by those who are wealthy, powerful, or famous arises, not from an inherent harmfulness of wealth, or power, or honor, but from imagining that gold satisfies our deepest need, that power negates our vulnerability, or that celebrity erases our shame. Possessions, power, and prestige engender many deceptions and camouflage profound poverty, weakness, and shame.
God’s preferential option for the poor is, in truth, God’s care for all of us in our profound neediness. When God casts down the mighty, God is loving the mighty as they need to be loved, as surely as God loves the lowly by lifting them up. When God sends the rich away empty, God is loving the rich as they need to be loved, as truly as God loves the hungry by filling them with good things.
God’s justice is indeed without bias or favoritism, for God gives to each of us exactly what we need. Sometimes that feels like salvation. Often it feels like punishment or wrath, but it is always exactly what we need. God’s justice, unlike that of the legal system, is not retributive, nor is it based on what we deserve. God’s justice is always reparative, entirely concerned with giving each of us just what we need. Human justice that gives each their deserts while ignoring their needs bears no resemblance to divine justice.
“Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us … because we are sorely hindered by our sins ….” Amen.
Advent 3A: Isa 35:1-10; Ps 146:4-9 (or Canticle 15); James 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we lean so sharply into Christmas that we must grab a pew to keep from toppling in. Our Gospel begins in Advent and ends with the naming of the Child. But it is not Christmas. Still, we wait.
We wait in the company of Isaiah. The two dreaded kings in today’s lesson are the kings of Israel and Aram, who have allied against Jerusalem. The hearts of the people shake “as trees … shake before the wind.”
God sends Isaiah to quell their fear. Ahaz, their king, is so terrified that a single “fear not” won’t do. “Say to him,” says the LORD, “‘Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart faint ….’”
Then God offers Ahaz a sign – any sign he chooses, no limits, whether it “be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz refuses. He feigns humility: “I will not put the LORD to the test.” But Ahaz is not humble. He just isn’t looking to the LORD for salvation. He has another plan. He will cast his lot with Assyria. That expanding empire has set its sights on Israel and Aram, and after all, my enemies’ enemy is my friend (or so say plotters and schemers).
Assyria defeats Israel. It destroys Samaria, its capital city, and deports captives. For a moment it seems that Ahaz’s strategy has worked, but he ignores the truth about empires: Once they devour your enemy, you are next. In the days of Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, Assyria lays siege to Jerusalem and almost conquers it, but that’s another story.
Ahaz refuses to rely on God, but his infidelity does not deter God. God gives a sign anyway, but it is not a sign that will impress Ahaz or his ally, much less his enemies. What impresses kings and emperors are implements of war, instruments of death, swords and spears, horses and chariots, and legions of soldiers.
The sign that God offers is life, not death. The birth of a child will signify God’s alliance with Jerusalem: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” – God with us. By the time this child is old enough to refuse evil and choose good, the two dreaded kings will vanish.
Ahaz seeks invulnerability. God offers a sign fraught with vulnerability and waiting, a pregnant woman and a child and nine months’ delay. In the meantime, they eat the bread of tears. Waiting is hard and dangerous.
Seven centuries later, Matthew sees God’s sign to Ahaz as signifying a greater deliverance. God once again sets a pregnant woman before the waiting house of David. Her name is Mary. She is betrothed to Joseph. They have not been together, but she is pregnant.
Joseph is a simple man from a small village. He waits for God’s kingdom and does not occupy himself with great matters or with things too hard for him. How will this descendant of Ahaz respond?
Joseph is a righteous man, a man of faith, but his betrothed has lost her virginity – or so it seems. Under the Law, he could have Mary executed, but the Law and the Prophets also call for mercy. Joseph tries to balance mercy and righteousness. He will dismiss Mary quietly. For Mary, who lives in a society that shames and ostracizes women pregnant before marriage, this is a pitiless mercy.
God speaks through an angel: “Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son. Name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Simple man that he is, Joseph is now occupied with a great matter. He is entangled in the mystery of God’s incarnation, but with the merciful demands of righteousness now clarified, Joseph obeys. He takes Mary for his wife and accepts her child as his own. In the meantime, they have no marital relations. Waiting is hard.
So, what does this have to do with Advent?
These stories expose Advent as a season of vulnerability. Waiting for help to arrive is dangerous. Waiting is hard. To embrace Advent is to embrace risk and danger and hardship. It is to put faith in the weakness of God and to trust what is coming but what you may not live to see.
Advent is a season of risk both for God and for us who wait. For God, risk is nothing new. God created a free creation. However powerful God may be, God does not program the creation like a robot. God risks a creation that can go awry and very quickly does, and now God risks entering that despoiled and dangerous creation in utter weakness. God risks loving what God will not control.
God faces the usual risks of human gestation. God also faces the risks of righteousness, the risk that Mary will be judged an adulteress. If Joseph or Mary’s family follows the strictures of the Law, God will die unborn. From the moment of conception, God embraces the vulnerability of humanity, of contingent existence in a hazardous world, made only more dangerous by rumors that this child will be King of the Jews.
At the angel’s word, Joseph too embraces that risk. Sure, he is afraid. Initially, he fears dishonor and disobedience to the Law, but he soon learns that there is much more to fear. Yet, having chosen to wait on God, Joseph never recants the way of vulnerability.
Let’s dive deeper into the notion of vulnerability. It is not the goal. Vulnerability hurts. It is dangerous. It is not something to seek for its own sake. It is not risk-taking for the sake of an adrenalin rush.
Vulnerability is the path. Love is the destination. Vulnerability is inherent in the way of love, for love puts self-preservation and self-advancement behind treating others as we would be treated, behind valuing others as we would be valued, behind our judgments and expectations of how others should live. The closer we get to the love of God the more readily we endure loss and disappointment for the sake of others. Whenever we open our hearts and our lives to others with all their faults and foibles, we accept vulnerability.
That’s the way God loves. Our Creator imagines us and loves us and in love creates us so that we might love. To this end, God embraces the vulnerability, the utter risk, of creating, the danger that creatures made for love will choose lust, elevating privilege, possessions, or power, over the well-being of neighbors, strangers, or enemies. God takes the risk that even our attempts to do good will arise from hope of reward rather than from surrender to the love of God. If I am in it for the sake of what I can get out of it, it is not love.
When we lose sight of God’s love and get mired in fear, hatred, and wanton desire, God takes our flesh to recreate divine love in us. The Creator becomes creature out of love and unto love. To paraphrase Julian of Norwich, in all that God does, God’s meaning is love.
And God’s love doesn’t end with incarnation. So that the Creator’s love may dwell fully in the creation, the Spirit of God inhabits it. The Spirit dwells in the creation so completely that the creation’s pain is the Spirit’s pain, and our sorrows are the Spirit’s sorrows. Our joys are the Spirit’s joys. Our groanings and yearnings for love evidence the Spirit’s presence. They are the Spirit’s longing in us. God’s Spirit so inhabits us that God’s love is closer to us than we are to ourselves. In this too, God embraces our vulnerability.
Just to be clear, in commending vulnerability, I am not commending submission to abuse or exploitation. God embraces vulnerability to end exploitation and abuse, not to enable it. Jesus does not live as a hapless victim. He gives himself into human hands only when his time comes. Mary and Joseph act decisively to protect themselves and their child. I am commending risk taken for the sake of loving others, and that’s entirely different from, and contrary to, passivity in the face of evil. It is risk taken to love others as God loves us.
That said, we who wait for God cannot escape vulnerability, nor should we try. Dodging vulnerability is a fool’s errand. Rather, we should accept our vulnerability, as God has. Vulnerability for the sake of the kingdom is the way of boldness and confidence. It is not the way of fearfulness. It is not the way of surrender to oppression. Vulnerability for the sake of the kingdom prepares our hearts to receive our Lord at his coming, whether he comes as the baby Jesus, as the Son of Man, or as a difficult neighbor, stranger, or enemy in need.
Loving God, you are for us, you are with us, and you dwell in us; teach us to embrace one another as vulnerably as you embrace us, to plunge headlong into the risk of loving as you love. Amen.
Advent 4A: Ps 80; Isa 7:10-16; Rom 1:1-7; Mt. 1:18-25
Copyright 2023 Michael A. Tanner. All rights reserved.