We just finished four weeks with the Advent values of hope, joy, peace, and love. We celebrated the birth of Jesus. Nativity scenes of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a stable and carols about his lowly birth are so common that we might forget how the Messiah, the Savior’s very birth is an act of divine resistance to the powers, principalities and empires. His birth is of eternal significance and also has particular significance for us in our time and in our lives.
Not living in a monarchy, we may not appreciate how important and celebrated the birth of a king was in the ancient world. We don’t think about the expected assumption of power and wealth that comes simply as what is due a king. We don’t realize the violence, palace coups, and political machinations that were part of being king. We forget the king’s word was law. We forget that kings are born in centers of power and wealth.
Stop and think for a moment how the Messiah’s birth contrasts with a king’s birth.
The Messiah is born to a poor family. His is an irregular birth, in a borrowed room in a small town. The sign the shepherds received couldn’t have been less royal and more normal, A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
If we don’t compare these things, we miss something important and startling about Jesus’ birth. We miss what we have been calling the Advent values found in the nativity stories.
As we recall the Advent values- hope, joy, peace, and love we didn’t ponder their opposites- the values that are so common in the world despair, sadness, war, hatred.
Many people and many groups these days are caught in a state of sorrow and despair; and helplessness and anger. People feel no one is looking out for them or cares about them. Mark Elias1 writing about American democracy states the problem like this, “We are on our own.” The institutions we thought would keep us safe are not. People are exhausted and afraid. It’s tempting to hunker down, look away, pretend it will all be fine. Elias writes “Our institutions are not going to save us. Only we can do that.”
Elias is talking about secular institutions, and offers a secular answer. But plenty of people have similar experiences with churches and religious institutions. They look at dysfunctional and self focused religious organizations and they feel they are on their own.
Before we despair over all this, we need to look carefully at how Jesus, the Savior lived and acted in our world.
He was: A Savior among us, not over us. A Savior with us, not opposed to us. A Savior for us, not for himself. A Savior who lives with us, not away in a mansion or palace. A Savior who expects us to live differently, as he did. Living in ways that oppose injustice and oppression. Living lives of hope, joy, peace, and love.
We often hope for someone to save us, to protect us, to keep us safe. We look for a person or institution to step up and relieve us of the burden of taking care of ourselves and each other. What we notice from Jesus’ life is that he doesn’t act without us. He doesn’t swoop in and fix the world with a wave of his divine hands. The devil tempts him with power and authority and Jesus declines. Crowds want to make him king and he walks away. He chooses to save with and through us. Throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New, God loves us but does not coerce us. God works with and through us- flawed as we are. We are not the ones to save the world and yet somehow our participation matters.
There is plenty to be concerned about. Real harm is being proposed. Real dangers exist. As we work for justice, people of faith need to be careful that we don’t become what we oppose. Our way forward is not to adopt the tactics of empire, but to live the way of Jesus. Our way forward is to become more and more like Jesus.
As we recall Jesus’ life and the Advent values he embodied, we need to think about how we will live them in our time and in our world.
Jim Wallis tells this story about Desmond Tutu when the South African Security Police interrupted a worship service and lined the walls of the cathedral. “After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, the Church leader acknowledged their power, (“You are powerful, very powerful”) but reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority (“But I serve a God who cannot be mocked!). Then… Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began… dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshipers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”2
I am not Desmond Tutu. I expect you are not either. I hope that none of us is ever in such a dangerous situation as Archbishop Tutu was. Still we can learn from Archbishop Tutu, and from other saints of Christian resistance. Perhaps just as importantly we can learn from each other. We can learn from the people we know and the people we meet as we work for justice in the places we are called to.
From everything I’ve read about Archbishop Tutu, he embodied the Advent values- of hope, joy, peace, and love and brought those values to his work of resistance. We each need to find our own way, in our own lives to live the Advent values of hope, joy, peace, and love. And we will need to find the way to embody these Advent values as a community that works for God’s way of hope, joy, peace, and love. No one is coming to save us, and we are not on our own. Because the Messiah has been born. Together we work for and live into the kingdom of God.
I have three books to suggest as you think about what you are called to do.
Hope in the Dark : Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities Rebecca Solnit.Haymarket Books, 2016
Sacred Resistance: A Practical Guide to Christian Witness and Dissent. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli. Abingdon Press 2018
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams. Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House 2016
- https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/we-are-on-our-own/ ↩︎
- Found in God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. Jim Wallis ↩︎
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