Advent Is a Call for Justice

Lectionary reflections on Luke 21:25-31

by Mark Harris

In these days, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear the suffering of the world, we ought indeed be "fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming." The twin world plagues of unrestrained war-making and the amassing of capital in the hands of the very few is counter to any hope for justice and peace, and is quite realistically fearsome and foreboding.

The apocalyptic vision in the Gospel today seems to be about the end time, a time of cosmic upheaval in which even "the powers of the heavens will be shaken." But it is . . . too tempting to make this Gospel theologically important but historically irrelevant.

The apocalyptic vision in the Gospel today seems to be about the end time, a time of cosmic upheaval in which even "the powers of the heavens will be shaken." But it is too easy to consign this vision to a powerful but finally ethereal future time in which the Son of Man comes in power and great glory. It is too tempting to make this Gospel theologically important but historically irrelevant. We must resist the easy temptation to see only the cosmic in this vision, for in doing so we will miss the power of this vision for every age, and more particularly for our own.

As we increasingly assign legitimacy to unrestrained war-making by governing powers and give license to unrelenting greed by global corporations, the twin powers of state (and other political organs) and capital become that which shakes the whole of humankind, the whole universe of human interaction. And such powers are present now and produce fear and foreboding for the poor in spirit and the poor in possessions.

The church in its memory of Advent always looks in two directions: in the direction of the first Advent, whose date is fixed and whose place is Palestine, and in the direct of the Advent to come, whose date is unknown to us and whose place is in the everywhere and everytime of suffering.

The first Advent gives us the incarnation, God with us. The second Advent gives us God for us, the assurance of things unseen. In this second Advent, the reign of God is present in any moment when we see and stand with those who suffer, in that seeing and standing we know the One who is to come, present.

A Latin American litany of suffering is written in which the names of those martyred or disappeared is read, and after each name the congregation responds, "Presente!" And after all the other names were read, the name is read, "Jesu Cristo," to which the response is, "Presente!" He will come when we least expect it, not waiting until the great end of all things, but now, when the demands for justice require.

The powers are so great as to drown out our visions of the stars in the heavens and our hopes here on earth, for who can see when the terror looms, the bombs drop or when the wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many? It is an Advent time, now.

The suffering of this world is so great that only those whose eyes are able to avoid seeing, and whose ears can not hear, can miss it. The powers are so great as to drown out our visions of the stars in the heavens and our hopes here on earth, for who can see when the terror looms, the bombs drop or when the wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many? It is an Advent time, now.

Advent is a call for justice: for a call to remembrance of just why God came into the world, that in Christ we might have life, and that abundantly and that the incarnation is good news to the poor. And that memory drives our sense of the Advent that is always at hand: the advent of God's liberating message to those who suffer -- the message that "when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near."

The powers of this world, which include among their particular strengths the power to make war and inflict terror and the power to amass capital at the expenses of reducing whole peoples to disposability, do not exhaust the power that is God's in Jesus Christ. That power is known in the child born in a manger and the One who comes in glory to those who seek justice in this world for which Our Lord and Savior gave his life.

 

The Rev. Canon Mark Harris is author of The Challenge of Change: The Anglican Communion in the Post Modern Era, and a member of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company's (The Witness magazine) board of directors. He lives in Lewes, Del., and may be reached by email at poetmark@worldnet.att.net