Advent 2: Malachi 3:1-4/Luke 3:1-6
But who can endure the
day of his coming, and who can hold out when he appears? Malachi 3:2
A few years ago I was driving my kids home from a school
activity. Along the way, I asked them to help me understand a few things about
this time of year. I am generally the chief provocateur when it comes to
questions of cultural icons and their power in our society. And I was in the
mood to provoke. So, I engaged my kids with the classic parental question: what
is at stake in the arrival of Santa? “Gifts, of course”, they replied. “Sure”,
I continued, “but gifts come from many people – grandparents, for example – so
again I ask, why Santa?” The conversation in the car went silent long enough
for me to negotiate a few tight corners. “Because,” my eldest finally
contended, “Santa is the one who is supposed to bring us what we want, the
things that really get us excited.” There was a general agreement among the
siblings. I began to raise a follow up question but we had made it home. It was
time to worry about other things.
My kids had provided the kind of answer that I have come to
expect when it comes to a season of the year known for the giving and receiving
of gifts. The air is thick with advertising. Our better nature is prompted to
stock up on items for all our loved ones. It’s better to give, than receive,
right? There is a long history of critique from within the church concerning
the commercialization of religious celebrations and season. This is not the
time to rehearse these critiques; except to say that one nagging appraisal that
is especially appropriate in the days of Advent focuses our attention on what
it is we want or expect at Christmas. My kids expressed their wish to have their
desires met in the form of things that get them excited. Can we truly expect anyone
to get excited about God when presents are in our dreams and wishes?
I read something this week from the Oxford scholar, Graham
Ward, which gave me pause in light of my questions around desire and Advent. Ward
commented that, “grace requires a hunger,
a sense of what one lacks, recognition of vulnerability, weakness, the need for
redemption. Salvation cannot operate where there is nothing needed or where
there is satisfaction with what one has”[1].
Satisfaction and need: these terms form part of our narrative around how we
navigate a world of wants, a world where our desires draw us to tangible
reminders of our worth to ourselves, and our worth to others. Yet
what of hunger, vulnerability, and salvation?
Let’s consider the use of ‘hunger’ for a moment. It is the
word Ward uses with relation to grace; it denotes longing, stretching for
something, moving towards a goal; the goal of our desire. When the prophet
Malachi wanted to express the anticipation of the arrival of God’s messenger,
he used the language of endure, as
in, “who can endure the day of his coming.” Endure is not really the best word
to capture what the prophet is getting at; better perhaps is contain or hold. Malachi is challenging God’s people: who of you, he contends,
can contain or hold the gift that God will send? The simple response is nobody,
at least, not in reference to how God provides. Consider: when God gives, God
does so in abundance (think of the diversity and beauty of creation). God
overwhelms. This is both a word of judgment and a sign of grace. We want, we
desire, we long after; and God overwhelms us with what we most need. Not always
what we want; but in giving us what we
need we learn to desire what God gives.
This is the wisdom of Advent: that so often we want and
desire things with a hunger that should be orientated towards other, more
difficult gifts: like the gift of ourselves in service to others, and the gift
of our abundance for the benefit of the common good. How about hunger for
justice, peace and goodwill? Yet even if we were to hunger after such things,
the one thing we cannot hunger enough for is the one thing that eludes us until
the hereafter: union and friendship with God as the bearer of all good gifts
and the giver of life in all its fullness. Everything else we desire leads only
to something else to desire; not so with God. God completes, God encompasses
our true end as human beings. It is perfectly good to desire things that bring
us joy, items that can be celebrated with family or friends or even just in our
own life. The thrust of Advent’s proclamation is not that we should abandon
what brings us joy in our life; rather, the message is that our deepest
satisfactions and our deepest joys are discovered as we deepen our walk with
God.
What Malachi and John the baptizer after him drive home for
us as the church, is this: we, that is, human beings and all creation, are
truly being human when we hunger or stretch for life with God. This is what it
means to hope. God comes to us, and
fill us, overflowing our lives and our community with God’s presence made
manifest through life with others. The alternative is to hunger or desire
something that lacks the gift of goodness and the promise of friendship: items
or states of being that decay, or break or simply dissolve over time. As
humans, we want life to contain something, to mean something. But who can contain
what God brings? Will it break us, overwhelms us, destroy us?
Having our lives re-oriented in a Godward direction, I dare say, is not painless; it requires of us
to loosen our grip with regards to our sense of security and our fear of death.
We must face our submission to the power of wealth and its related cousin, the
illusion of salvation at the hands of technology. We must contend with shifting
values and corruptible ideals. And we do so under the promise of a God who
cannot be contained or held but who contains us, hold us, in love so that we
might grow together in that love.
Gifts are fine; gifts are signs of charity and friendship.
Yet, Santa cannot bring what only God can in the flesh of Mary’s child: the
gift of our salvation, the gift of redeemed humanity, and the promise to
overcome our sin and death through the human body of this child. It may not sound like much of a life when
compared to the insatiable hunger generated by the marketplace; however, where
else can we discover true human living if not in the God who created us and sustains
us moment by moment? This Advent may we strive after God through prayer,
service and joy, so that when Christmas arrives, we will recognize the babe
born to Mary as the source of human satisfaction.
[1] Ward,
G. S. (2009). The politics of discipleship : becoming postmaterial citizens.
(Grand Rapids, Mich., Baker Academic), p. 266.
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