~ by the Pastor and guest writers ~
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Advent and A World of Dis-Ease (November 13, 2002) By the time you open your mailbox and scan our newsletter Advent will be at our doorsteps. It seems like it comes too early this year. We will have little time left to push ourselves away from the Thanksgiving dinner table. Advent nips at the heels of our holiday celebrations. This Advent our world is caught in a whirl of dis-ease. Our sense of security is shaken and the fabric of western culture is stressed and seriously weakened by crises internal and external. The times they are a-changing! And our culture’s sense of upward and onward has been challenged. Discordant religions and strident economies batter at the identities of the world’s peoples. What will happen next? And where? Who’s in charge? Now we know that apocalyptic scenarios are not confined to biblical texts. We feel vulnerable in previously unimaginable ways. In the reducing and reconstituting of values, commitments, and principles primarily in economic terms, the sense of what is good, right, and just simply vanishes from the landscape. To seek economic solace without moral accountability cannot be done, not if this world is God’s. Will Willimon, Dean of Duke University Chapel, reminds us that we live in an age that illustrates “the deadly results of service to the kingdom of this world rather than the Kingdom of Heaven.” Willimon goes on to predict “that the scandals of American business management…will have a greater influence upon the psyche of this generation of young adults than even the horrors of 9/11. We’ve seen the results of our two-decade run on the treasures of this world and they are ugly.” Is there no vision inside to act as a guide? Is there no light beckoning? Who can respond to our dis-ease? We witness hopes and fears tearing at each other in a vortex of violence and destruction. “If you do not get your way or something displeases you, it is possible simply to blot it out” (Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism, pg. 299). Is restoration, a mending of God’s world possible? Can shattered hearts and visions as well as hopes be healed? Is God at war with the world, too? In what or whom is our hope grounded? When the ground we were so certain would never shake, is shaking, is this still “my Father’s world?” Enter Advent. The task this Advent is an imaginative reading in/of a shattered world in the light of powerful Advent texts that speak of a faithful God at work, a God whose patience has not run out and who still sends life-giving, hope-endowing sun and rain prodigally and indiscriminately to nurture the beloved creation. Advent is about the character of God, the faithful one. Advent speaks to our dis-ease and challenges us to recall alternative visions and experiences of human community shaped by the gracious God. Advent declares that the world belongs to God and not to any imperial design committed to an elitism of ethnic origin, religion, rational truth, or economics. Religion cannot be marginalized or individualized, rather it challenges political claims, social organization, economic structures, and ideological commitments. Not only are we nurtured by the Advent texts to live and act in certain ways, but also to think and perceive in certain hopeful ways not because of what we can see, encourage and commit to, but because of the faithful God whose ways are not our ways.
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