Message: Advent as Threshold; Advent as Homecoming
(Advent 2: Exile)
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.”
Today is the second Advent Sunday; it is also the anniversary of the United Nations instituting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, 1948. After today’s service, everyone is invited to stay and watch a few videos from Amnesty International Write for Rights 2020. Let’s help release those who do justice and are imprisoned by oppressive governments. Let’s help end the global complicity in silencing the cries of the poor, the women, the oppressed, and the Indigenous land defenders in our world. Immanuel United Church is a participant in letter-writing to advocate for the rights of political prisoners; we have contributed to helping release them for many years. The original document from 1948 declares that everyone has the right to own property; that everyone has the right to rest and leisure and periodic holidays with pay; that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile; that everyone has the right to education, and to a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being; that everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions; and that everyone has the right to seek asylum from persecution.
There’s a Sunday School song, widely sung in Canada and also in Korea, “Jesus (or God’s) Got the Whole World in God’s Hands.” I never liked it because I saw colonialism and missionary expansion and religious conversion in its words, but when I encountered the song title and the verses again in this Advent season, I took a moment to think about it. Our suffering is deep with Covid-19; we have every reason to worry and raise concerns about the human right to health care and well-being, especially the rights of those who are the most vulnerable in our own city, in Canada and the United States…
Jesus is born today for all of us - the whole world - in God’s care.
The “Captivity of Israel” for which we lament and pray for our emancipation is not only Covid-19 Captivity: there are many, especially when the meaning of Advent - waiting for the end of suffering and the groaning of both human and creation -- is seen and interpreted through the lens of the most oppressed. We do not seek to compare different human sufferings and inappropriately attempt to rank the hierarchy ofsufferings and list whose liberation should come first. Rather, ‘marking the captivity’ means to truly prepare ourselves for entering the “threshold” of Advent, before the quiet night of the birth of Christ. John O’Donohue, the late Celtic Irish poet and philosopher, and author of Anam Cara and To Bless the Space Between Us, said during an interview that the origin of ‘threshold’ comes from “threshing” which means separating the grain from the husk. “So the threshold, in a way, is a place where you move into more critical and challenging and worthy fullness.”
O’Donohue continues: “There are huge thresholds in every life. You know that, for instance, if you are in the middle of your life in a busy evening, fifty things to do and you get a phone call that somebody you love is suddenly dying, it takes ten seconds to communicate that information. But when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. Suddenly everything that seems to be important before is all gone and now you are thinking of this. … A threshold is a line which separates two territories of spirit, and very often how we cross is the key thing.”
Perhaps, holding the many moments and places of “Advents” in the whole world (prayerfully and carefully recasting the word Advent in plural) that are happening now, or that are struggling to find their way, becomes a threshold to enter Advent, or, is the Advent. Advent as Threshold becomes a place for us to move into, as a community and as an individual self, more critical and challenging and worthy of the fullness of our attention.
Advent becomes a door, a table, a geography, a highway for everyone’s homecoming. In today’s reading, Isaiah 40, Israel had been stripped of everything that had become an obstacle to their relationship with God. And by the time of Isaiah 40, the exiles were poised to return home and to serve God.
“Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to the city
that its warfare is ended;
That its iniquity is pardoned;That it has received from God’s hand
double for all its sins.”
The whole of the book of Isaiah is the prophet’s emotion-filled meditation and outpouring of prophecy upon the destiny of Jerusalem. The Book of Isaiah has four main parts. The book begins by harshly anticipating YHWH’s judgement upon Jerusalem for its idolizing power and wealth, exploitation, injustice and false allegiance. Before Isaiah 40, it is about the prophecy of inescapable judgement on the destiny of Jerusalem: the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians and the ensuing deportation and exile. The prophet does not diminish or soften the judgement to come: the expulsion of the leaders and people of Israel to the foreign land of Babylon, the new empire. However, ultimately, the Book of Isaiah declares that judgement is not the last word for God’s city. The prophet painstakingly makes an effort to announce to the people of Advent the hope beyond judgement.
“Comfort, O Comfort my people, Says your God.”
The situation bears some resemblance to our own. There is hope, perhaps dimly seen, on the horizon - the power of Babylon is now fading - but the current situation is still one of displacement, anxiety and suffering. (Just like thanks to the heroic efforts of scientists, there are effective vaccines in the works, but it will be several months before they are widely available!)
Still, we see all of this isolation, dismay, grief, separation, pain and death, but God will bring shalom (peace) to Jerusalem (salem in Jerulalem is shalom, which means peace! salem = peace); There will be renewal and restoration.
Those who remained or survived, ultimately, all of Israel (those who died will resurrect bodily — says the fourth part of the Book of Isaiah!), will return home, out of exile into new well-being! Today’s reading of Isaiah 40 professes that it is a “herald”; It is the glad news that the reality of loss and suffering is shifting to a new hope and possibility.
“Your God reigns”. God is doing a new thing - a restoration of peace, Jerusalem (shalom for Jerusalem) after the “former things of destruction and deportation.”
Then, after these glad tidings, the prophet still speaks; the remainder of the book tells the hearers that we, Israel, still have work before us even after the exile is ended: How and whether we will struggle to reshape Jerusalem as God intends; to make it the land of prosperity for everyone. Israel at that time had the same task as we who are going through the year of the pandemic: How will we reorganize our lives after this pandemic to make sure the post-pandemic of Covid-19 will be the “homecoming” for you and for everyone?
What “hope” will we sing as the new reality to come after our own inescapable judgement?
In your song-writing, who will the song of hope be speaking to? Who are the people God speaks of with the words, “Comfort, O Comfort my people?”
If the post-exile of our time means that we never again fill up shopping malls with crowds of people, what would it mean for us to “create space” spiritually, in the same way we keep our physical distance to save lives? What are the examples of creating space to save lives?
What has been a “threshold” moment for you in this Advent? What do you hope to be a “homecoming” moment for you after this exile?
I appreciate Advent as a time to find our inner landscape meeting the Biblical landscapes in the stories of the past. Memories of Israel are played on such unforgettable geographical landscapes: Exodus, return from Exile, Apocalyptic Christmas (as the New Heaven and New Earth) and Incarnation (redirecting our attention to the most neglected or misunderstood part of here and now). I hope that we think about Advent as the work of 'creating space' just like Mary and Joseph said yes to the angel Gabriel to welcome a baby and made room for God’s incarnation (for us, deeper conversation, finding an inner landscape of beauty, holding sacred intimacy with those who live in our household, caring for community with a phone call or Winnipeg Harvest) — in such an unprecedented time as now, when physical distancing has become our bondage and captivity (the dilemma) as well as the way to save lives (the gift).
1st Advent: Exodus
2nd Advent: Exile
3rd Advent: Apocalyptic Christmas
4th Advent: Incarnation
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