You’ve heard
a lot about Advent from my colleagues, and I would add to what they’ve already
said by saying that Advent is about being “alert”, being ready for something
big. (No surprises there right?)
Being “alert” sounds, similar enough the other
descriptions we’ve heard this month. We’ve heard the terms, “anticipation”,
“expectation”, even “Hope”? Hope in the cute baby messiah, anticipating that
his little crèche will soon be surrounded by curious farm animals and expecting
wayward astrologers to bring gifts?
It’s an expectation, or “advent” of “The first
coming”, in other words. Whether or not we believe in the historicity of a
first coming (to be clear: I do not) is beside the point. For me Christmas is a
useful and potent allegory that should guide us away from empirical facts to
the unnameable and mysterious principles that lay beyond it.
The thing
that might surprise you, and really fascinates me, is the way that advent
actually points us to the more interesting “Second Coming”. We commonly refer
that event, predicted to happen at some future time, as the apocalypse!
The most
lurid descriptions of the Second Coming and the cosmic cataclysm that must
precede it are contained in the last book of the Christian New Testament, The
Revelation to John, or the Book of Revelation. Some of you know that The
Revelation to John is one of my favorite texts--ever. It has epic battle
scenes, dragons and sea monsters, triumphant heroes, geo-political intrigues
and divine vengeance.
It’s easy to see why The Revelation to John
has kind of been the go-to text for revolutionaries, abolitionists, Liberation
Theologians, poets and William Butler Yeats for 2,000 years.
The book is absolutely
confusing, and absolutely riveting, moving backwards and forwards in time,
offering what seems to be a “present” glimpse of the ultimate cosmic
realignment towards justice and beloved community. I am offering a class on The
Revelation to John in the months of December and January. We meet in the
Emerson Room at Fahs House on alternate Thursdays. Check In the Know for
Details. I hope you will join us!
Would we reenact the final battle between the
so-called “Forces of Light and Forces of Dark”? (I bet some of our kids would
like that) Perhaps we would sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, all the
verses, instead of Jingle Bells? Would we have a seven-headed beast rise up out
of Hades in our Christmas pageant? Or perhaps it would be a Corporatized
Octopus-type creature hooking us in its tentacles of consumer goods and
services. Moreover, how would we depict the “New Heaven and the New Earth” that
must rise out of the ashes of the old ones? All of these are important
considerations. All of these make a new compelling narrative for the Advent
season. (interestingly enough, there are some parallels to northern European “pagan”
myths that would be apropos to this task)
I feel like
a change is coming, maybe it will be a divine judgment of sorts for the wrongs
of economic injustice and ecological abuses, or social inequality. Maybe the
system will run out of steam and the Earth will cry out, “I am tired and I am
not going to take any more.” Perhaps it will be a world turned upside down for
a time.
I am alert this time of year to how our world
might be changed for the better. I am alert for how that change, if it is to be
lasting, may not come as a little radiant bundle of joy, but rather as a bowl
filled with wrath and poured out onto the world. In the end apocalypse means
“to uncover” as well as “to reveal” but it is rightly associated with cataclysm
and dislocation in the interim.
I am also
alert to how each year; each day we are given a chance to start again and maybe
avert the worse parts of the disaster that is supposed to await us in a kind of
historic future. Advent is a chance for us to memorize that future history so
that we might both anticipate it and hopefully avoid it. Furthermore, if we
cannot avoid the future, perhaps we might find solace in better understanding
how we will get to it.
An apocalyptic advent reminds us that if we
keep a certain course there will indeed be “hell” to pay, but that’s just one
part of the story. While the future history may already be written we are still
given the opportunity to write an alternate ending or at the very least, we can
be alert and prepared. The “now”, "what was” and “what shall become”,
three worlds, collide in the Advent of Apocalypse.
When memorizing the past
becomes old, I ask you: “how will you remember the future?”
See you in church!
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