Advent calls us to
the adventure of waiting! I think waiting has two essential dimensions: hanging
on and longing for. We hang on to the reality right at hand and long for a
new reality that is underway. Between these two, we unfold as better human beings
and better disciples. Waiting is a descipling endeavor, and it is adventurous.
Donny Hathaway's
poetical words:
"Hang on to the world as it
spins around.
Just
don't let the spin get you down.
Things are moving fast.
Hold on tight, and you will last.
Take it from me: someday, we'll all be free!
Hathaway's
voice was prophetic and challenging as an African American songwriter and
singer in Chicago during the 60s and 70s. Every prophetic voice has an element
of advent in it: hanging on and longing for. In the Prophetic tradition within
the Bible, both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, we see the elements
of adventurous advent in many ways. Walter Brueggemaan talks about two aspects
of the prophetic imagination in the Bible: i) embracing, and ii)
imagining anew.
Right in this
prophetic lineage, the Evangelist Luke places “John the Baptist” at the very
outset of the narrative in Luke, chapter 3:1-6. Many commentators consider this
small episode of the larger pericope as the proper beginning of the gospel. With
its clear historical references, Chapter 3 invites us to the concrete
historical world of the first century Palestine. The rhythm of the narrative ( call,
commissioning, and content of the prophecy) resembles the usual "prophetic
call narratives" in the hebrew Bible. We can sense three pivotal movements
within the literary text in connection to the Theology of the Advent while
looking through the lens of empire criticism.
“Sand”
as Strategic Spacing
The first two verses
of Chapter Three make explicit historical and geopolitical references in the
first century Common Era:"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee,
and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and
Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,
the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert." These verses
refer to the imperial and religious confluence of the Pax Romana. The
fifteenth-year reference mimics imperial calendrical calculation, placing the
emperor at the center. The latter half of the passage decenters it. The
top-down, over-arching imperial system starts from Caesar down through Pilate,
Herod, Philip, and Lysanias. On top of that, there is a clear reference to the
religious leaders as well, Annas and Caiaphas. This invisible social contract
between the imperial system and religious leadership of the time made the social reality unhinged. However, the small
appendix to verse 2 makes a subversive turn: "The word of God came to John
son of Zechariah in the Desert (wilderness)." This makes a U-turn. We can
find subtle but profound spatial politics here.The strategic spacing of the
desert or wilderness becomes the locus of a new public theology of John the
Baptist. The Greek word (ἐρήμῳ) (erēmō), used here for desert, has multiple
meanings. It can be a desert, uninhabited wilderness, or wild grassland. But
the point is that it is a bereft place, a marginal space.
For
an imaginative exercise : consider that you are stepping into a
desert on your own. You are touching the sand and feeling it. You try to hold
it, but it overflows out of your palms; when you try to move, you may lose your
balance and miss your step because it is loose ground. Tiny grains of sand may
irritate between your toes, and the grains may cause pain inside your nails;
when the wind blows, you will be bathed in sand, you will be wrapped with a
sand blanket. You become totally consumed by the sand. It is a totally
unsettling experience! It may unsettle ( symbolically)your preconceived notions, set patterns,
disciplinary practices, and many other things.
Evangelist Luke
strategically places the desert over the imperial palaces and temples of the
time. The desert invites you to another way of being in the world! I prefer to
call this Sand Theology. If you notice, Jesus follows John the Baptist,
starting his public ministry in the wilderness, countering the temptations of
the empire. If we go further, we see evangelist Luke uses a unique phrase in
Acts 7:38 (church in the desert - ekklesia en te eremo). It's part of Stephen's
profound speech before his martyrdom. A church that is always in exodus. A
church that embodies the message of advent. A church in the desert would be a
church that is always on the move, always listening to the spirit of re-forming
and reshaping, and re-imagining.
I often wonder why we
don’t keep a box of sand beside the baptismal font to remind us that we are a
speck of dust and part of a church in the desert. The theology of Advent and
the Theology of Sand (desert/wilderness) go hand in hand. After all, during the
advent, we wait for God, who incarnated
in the human body. The human body is another form of sand and soil, a part of
the earth. Sometimes, we need a baptism in the sand to learn the art of
unsettling the empires within us.
“Grace-d Economics”
In verse 3, we see
the content of John the Baptist's prophetical message: "repentance and
forgiveness of sins." According to Dominic Crossan, John the Baptist was
one of the leaders of the Baptism movement in the first century and probably
emerged from the Essenes and apocalyptic movement. He preached advent, the
immanence of God. Repentance (metanoia) and "forgiveness (aphesin) of
sins" is all about our dependency on the Grace of God. The content of the
message of John the Baptist, is the “Grace side economics” over against the “Greed
side economics of the empire.” In the greed side economy of the Roman empire,
it was almost impossible to talk about “grace or forgiveness.” Forgiveness has
a clear economic reference. The Roman Criminal Justice system had no room for
repentance and forgiveness. Therefore,
it was impossible to speak about grace. What will it look like in a graceless
world? Can we laugh enough in a graceless world? Can we love enough in a
graceless world? Can we talk about freedom in a graceless world? ….
Advent is all about
hanging on and longing for and unfolding in between in a graceless world. Let us
take the courage to talk about the Graced economics over the greedy economics.
Poetic
“Re-Story-ation”
The second half of
the passage, verses 4, 5, and 6, is a huge shift in the literary structure; Luke
takes Hebrew poetry from Isaiah 40:3-5, and beautifully improvises it. We see a
shift here from prose to poetry. Poetics is always about new possibilities in
language. Exploring new possibilities of the language in a time of Pax Romana.
It is, of course, not the lingua franca of the empire but a lingua franca of
restoration. Restoration is always a kind of “re-story-ation.” “Re-story-ation”
through micro histories and subversive poetics, against the mega stories of the
empire.
“The voice of one
crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
make his paths straight.
5 Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth,
6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
This is totally a
new eschatological imagination. Luke improvises the Isaiahanic text and
connects it to the story of Jesus, pointing towards the lordship of Jesus
Christ, replacing the Lorship of the empire.
It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of
imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing
futures alternative to the single one the empire wants to urge as the only
thinkable one. Indeed poetic imagination is the last way left in which to
challenge and conflict the dominant reality. The dominant reality is
necessarily in prose, but everybody's responsibility is to create poetical
imaginations about other ways of being. Such an activity would say that the
apathy does not fully consume us. It requires that we have not yet finally given up on the promise spoken
over us by God who is free enough to keep promises. This is the heart of the
Advent.
Waiting involves a
certain level of uncertainty. Robin Kimmerer in her beautifully written book “Braiding
Sweetgrass,” says; “What does it take to abandon what does not work and take
the risks of uncertainty? We'll need courage, we'll need each other's hands to
hold and faith in the geese to catch us. It would help to sing. The landing
might not be soft, but land holds many medicines. Propelled by love, ready to
work, we can jump toward the world we want to co-create, with pocket full of
seeds. And rhizomes!”
Advent
EXtro:
In advent we wait for
God, and at the same time, we realize God is waiting for us and counting on us.
A Czechoslovakian proverb says, “They are waiting at God's windows.”
That means there is a meeting point where our waiting for God and God’s waiting
for us converge together. At that converging point, Advent becomes meaningful. We
are the Advent people and the Christmas people at the same time. Let the
adventures of Advent keep us challenged!
References
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition( Minneapolis: Fortress, 2018).
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. First edition, (Minneapolis: Milkweed, 2013)
