RBWords - Volume 21 - Number 11: November 2008
Something to Think About
- Today is the First Sunday in Advent. I sat down this morning to pray after lighting the first candle on my Advent “wreath” and wondered how to speak a word of hope and encouragement to the congregation at the sisters’ infirmary this morning and to those who receive my online preaching (The Word to the Wise – www.rbwords.com) and to my readers of RBWORDS. There is much to worry about in terms of violence – the Mumbai terrorism in India (along with renewed persecution of Christians in that country), the genocidal wars in the Congo, the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the drug wars in Mexico, just to name a few. There is the financial crisis that will impact the jobs of millions of Americans at just the time of year when there is supposed to be lots of “Christmas cheer” in the air and lots of spending on gifts. There is the continued violence of abortion and capital punishment in our own land along with the usual (unfortunately) difficult emotional struggles that often arise with greater intensity in this season. I am grateful that there is such a thing as the liturgical season of Advent that gives us a time to put all this into perspective before we celebrate the single day of Christmas.
What perspective is possible? What hope is there? It seems to me that God took human history seriously enough to become human and live in history. In the person of Jesus Christ, God suffered violence, threats and rejection to show that these are not the end or purpose of life. Indeed what shines through all of this like the star seen by the Magi is the constant of God’s LOVE for all of us. If only we could grasp that powerful love and turn it to a realization of the futility of armed conflict or putting our hopes in money or even in the latest scientific research! The secular Christmas reminds me of the picture of the little boy sitting in the midst of opened packages and wrappings crying: Is this all? The Advent season reminds us that love will require us to wait patiently for the annual story to run its course and reveal to us the Word Made Flesh. We take the time to make sure our loved ones know they are truly loved, not so much by the arms-length expedient (nice though it may be) of a packaged gift but by saying to them what God has said to us: I love you! The rich scriptural and spiritual offerings of the season will make more sense to us if we keep those three words in mind day after day.
It Has Been Said
“We Christians must be very clear as to what we believe about the identity of the one to be born at Christmas. He is not just the Prince of Peace, the title that even noncommittal media commentators are willing to give him. He is the Messiah of the house of David, embodying in himself all that rich OT background that these Advent [scriptural] passages have evoked again and again. Beyond that he is the unique Son of God, the very presence of God with us. Anything less is not the gospel, and assent to anything less will not make us disciples. And assent to that double identity is not just an intellectual assent; it involves being willing to hear Jesus’ proclamation of God’s will and doing it.”
From CHRIST IN THE GOSPELS OF THE LITURGICAL YEAR by Raymond E. Brown S.S.