O Come, O Come, Emmanuel? (Making Space for the Gospel – Part 2)
December 3, 2018 Roland Kuhl 0 Comments
These postings are to be reflections on my life as I traverse through my 64th year, and so some may be wondering why there is so much theology in my journaling. Well, that’s because theology, for me, is not just about statements of belief, rather it is much more comprehensive – it provides a worldview, how I see the world and how I seek to live in the world. Years ago I was shaped by a story of my own making that had little vision, but now I give attention to God’s Story and Vision because I realize that this Story and Vision radically transforms and continually re-creates my story and gives me a vision that is rooted in the One whose name is a verb, whose name is IS, I AM, One who not merely has existence, but is Existence (cf. Exodus 3 – talk to me if you want to explore this further. It’s a conversation that I have with my undergrad religious studies students so they might regard God differently than they often do). So, I think theologically and I seek to live theologically, because the foundation of the way I engage the world is fundamentally theological.
So, a few days ago, I was with a group of clergy – we hang out regularly on Thursday mornings to engage Scripture together, going over lectionary texts, as we prepare to preach, teach, or just reflect (I’m in the latter category – just enjoying gathering to engage Scripture – a Mennonite with a group of Lutherans). For those who follow the Church calendar, we are in the beginning of the year – Advent (the time in which we anticipate and prepare for the coming of the Child born in Bethlehem).
Our conversation started with one of my colleagues expressing frustration – the commercialization and shallowness of Christmas (beginning earlier and earlier every year). He’s coming to pastoral ministry out of corporate America. He recounted about a person in his congregation coming up to him and asking “when are we going to hear messages about the good news, why always this focus on hardship and struggle?” In expressing his frustration, he expressed to us, “we don’t want to wrestle with what Advent reveals, we want to skip to the baby in the manger.”
Without Advent, the Christmas story is merely a fairy tale, like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, two times of the year in which we give and receive presents or pass out candy and marshmallow Peeps that blow up in microwaves. Why sing O Come, O Come Emmanuel? What does Advent have to do with Christmas?
The message of Advent is one of giving hope, sharing news of anticipation for those living in suffering; they no longer know how to express longings for peace, for joy, for love, for hope. Yet, in their despair a light shines, a voice comes, hope is given to them, reason is given for them to anticipate something different, the direction of their lives is about to take on a grand reversal. And so, in anticipation their voices cry out O Come, O Come Emmanuel (God be with us).
But those of us, who live in comfort with few hardships, have no such longings (or are unaware that we have such longings, having been long desensitized) because we are closer to the 1% than we are to the 90%. We don’t want to slog through Advent to get to Christmas – we want to skip to the baby in the manger, a nice story behind the sharing of gifts, going to parties, being with friends and family, but nothing that really matters in the living of our lives.
Yet, for those in the bottom 1%, the Bob Cratchit’s (from Dicken’s A Christmas Carol), Advent gives permission for them to voice their longings, their cries. In response the message of Advent looks toward the good news of Christmas. That in their cries that grow out of despair, hopelessness, joylessness, lovelessness, and the lack of peace, there is another cry, another voice, that expresses hope, joy, love, and peace. This cry is a different cadence, a different rhythm that does not blend in with their voices, but begins to rise above their own cries. They begin to hear the cries, the voices of prophets. And they hear the prophets Isaiah and John the Baptist much differently than we do. When they hear their voices as ones crying out in the wilderness of our world, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 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; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (cf. Luke 3: 4-6, Isaiah 40: 3-5), they hear a real response to their life situation – Advent leads into the reality of Christmas in which the coming of Christ makes things whole, a message that breaks out in hope, joy, love and peace. Advent turns from despair to an eagerly anticipation and so they sing out O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!
But perhaps too many us are like Ebenezer Scrooge. I know I am more like Scrooge than I am like Cratchit. I have been desensitized to these deep longings that are in me just as they are in others. And so, I put up with Advent, focusing on its message, not out of any desperation, but as four Sundays that precede Christmas. I can understand wanting to skip to the baby in the manger.
However, whenever we think of Scrooge we don’t think of Scrooge’s transformation on Christmas Day, we think of him as a self-obsessed miser having no compassion for those in need (“are there no prisons, are there no workhouses . . .?). Yet, transformation came only after he was brought to a place of expressing longing in his own life – after the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future visited him. When his eyes were opened to the man he was, he had become, when he saw all that he had contributed to the hardship of others by his own wanton disregard, he cried out wondering if it was too late for him to have a different future.
In many ways the bottom 1% are better off than those of us near the top 1%. When the prophet comes declaring the coming of the Lord, they can hear and anticipate and receive the One who brings hope, peace, joy and love – to enter into a new Story and Vision. But as we are caught up in our own worlds, long desensitized to our true needs, we miss a voice of one calling in the wilderness. We do not anticipate any kind of salvation, nor are we aware of what the baby in the manger means and brings. When we hear others singing, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, we are not sure why they sing with such hope and anticipation.
Yet, years ago I discovered that God loves me enough to lead me to an awareness of deep longings within me. I was led into despair, not to be left in despair, but to hear a voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare a way for the Lord.” In being embraced by this voice, in hearing this voice, in responding, I found myself joining with others in a song of anticipation – O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Before then, I did not understand how these words carried hope. But after responding to this voice in the wilderness, my wilderness, this song became my song. I look forward to Christmas and rediscover every year that we only experience the reality of Christmas as we live through Advent – O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!