It certainly sounds more realistic for people in darkness to dream of God’s day of vengeance, finding satisfaction in the hope that at the Last Judgement all the godless enemies who oppress us here will be cast into hellfire. But what kind of blessedness is it that luxuriates in revenge and needs the groans of the damned as background to its own joy? For to us a child is born, not an embittered old man. God in a child, not as a hangman.
…
He will establish “peace on earth,” we are told, and he will “uphold peace with justice and with righteousness.” But how can peace go together with justice? What we are familiar with is generally peace base on injustice, and justice based on conflict. The life of justice is struggle. Among us, peace and justice are divided by the struggle for power. The so-called “law of the strongest” destroys justice and right. The weakness of the peacemakers makes peace fragile. It is only in the zeal of love that what power has separated can be put together again: in a just peace and in the right to peace.
This love does not mean accepting breaches of justice “for the sake of peace,” as we say. But it does not mean, either, breaking someone else’s peace for the sake of our own rights. Peace and righteousness will only kiss and be one when the new person is born, and God the Lord, who has created all things, arrives at his just rights in his creation. When God is God in the world, then no one will want to be anyone else’s Lord and God anymore…
But is this really possible here and now, or is it just a dream?
Jürgen Moltmann in The Power of Powerlessness. I read it in “Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas”. Emphasis mine.
Tag: christmas
I’ve got an uneasy relationship with Christmas and gifts. I’m not great at gift giving in general. And I don’t feel much on the receiving end – it’s clearly not my love language! The forced-ness of gift giving at Christmas, combined with the overwhelming commercial advertising and expectation, combined with remembering something else that’s supposed to be remembered in that season, combined with thinking about our level of consumption and it’s impact on the environment… I’d personally prefer to opt out of the whole thing but that feels too grinch-like so we continue quietly.
So this reading from “The Gospel in Solentiname” hit home. Ernesto Cardenal the priest apparently “does not believe in sermons” and so facilitated small group discussions to help his people understand the stories. The perspectives they share are from such a different world to my own – they were among the poor in Nicaragua at the height of the cold war.
And the comment from Olivia astounded me with its clarity:
When they saw the star again
They were filled with joy.
They went into the house;
they saw the child with Mary his mother,
and they knelt down and worshipped him.
Then they opened their boxes
And gave him presents of gold, incense and myrrh.Tomás: “They come and open their presents – some perfumes and a few things of gold. It doesn’t seem as if he got big presents. Because those foreigners that could have brought him a big sack of gold, a whole bunch of coins, or maybe bills, they didn’t bring these things. What they brought to him were little things… That’s the way we ought to go, poor, humble, the way we are. At least that’s what I think”.
Olivia: “It’s on account of these gifts from the wise men that the rich have the custom of giving presents at Christmas. But they give them to each other”.
The Gospel in Solentiname. I read it in “Watch for the light, readings for Advent and Christmas”.
A very simple observation from Søren Kierkegaard on the difference between knowledge and action (commenting on the story of the Wise Men consulting the scribes in Jerusalem for the location of the Messiah):
Although the scribes could explain where the Messiah should be born, they remained quite unperturbed in Jerusalem. They did not accompany the Wise Men to seek him. Similarly, we may know the whole of Christianity, yet make no movement. The power that moves heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved.
What a difference! The three kings had only a rumour to go by. But it moved them to make that long journey. The scribes were much better informed, much better versed…
Who had the more truth? The three kings who followed a rumour, or the scribes who remained sitting with all their knowledge?
Søren Kierkegaard (from Meditations from Kierkegaard, edited and translated by T.H. Croxall. I read it in “Watch for the Light”)
For the third year now, I’ve been following Advent readings from the book “Watch for the Light“. One of the readings was this poem by Jane Kenyon, it’s titled “Mosiac of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993”:
On the domed ceiling God is thinking: I made them my joy, and everything else I created I made to bless them. But see what they do! I know their hearts and arguments: “We’re descended from Cain. Evil is nothing new, so what does it matter now if we shell the infirmary, and the well where the fearful and rash alike must come for water?” God thinks Mary into being. Suspended at the apogee of the golden dome, she curls in a brown pod, and inside her the mind of Christ, cloaked in blood, lodges and begins to grow.Jane Kenyon, “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon.
This poem hit me hard this year. Particularly with the invasion of Ukraine this year, the second verse of the poem reminded me of the bombing of the Mauripol theater that women and children were sheltering in, one of many atrocities that we’ve seen.
The scale of human suffering, so much of it that we inflict on each other, is unbearable. And what does God do with all that?
“God thinks Mary into being… and inside her the mind of Christ, cloaked in blood, lodges and begins to grow.”
Is a baby really going to be enough? Enough to get humanity off an evil course and back on track? What possible difference could a baby make? It reminds me of this line from the song “Seasons”:
You’re the God of greatness
Lyrics from “Seasons”. Words and Music by Chris Davenport, Benjamin Hastings & Ben Tan. Published by Hillsong.
Even in a manger
For all I know of seasons
Is that you take your time
You could have saved us in a second
Instead you sent a child
This contrast perhaps says something about God, and about the gift humanity wanted vs the gift humanity needed: power vs vulnerability, force vs weakness, hard logic vs trust, quick results vs patience.
Considering our need, the gift most of us would ask for would be the forceful intervention. And yet at Christmas we Christians reflect on the fact that’s not the gift God choose to give us. Instead, God sent a child.
In what areas are you praying for God’s forceful intervention, and instead God is doing something small and fragile, slow and vulnerable?
Where are you using your own power and influence to force a quick solution, when perhaps there’s a less expected approach God is initiating?
Advent is about making space for God to come.
And its quite likely that the way God comes among us now will be in a gentler, slower, easier to ignore, less obvious, more vulnerable form than we want.
The work of advent isn’t for us to take the initiative and plan how God will come, but to make space, to wait, and to commit to that way.
To respond as Mary did, “May it be to me as you have said”.
Merry Christmas.
(Disclaimer: My startup journey and my faith overlap in this post. For those of you who want to avoid the theology stop reading now!)
I’m almost at the end of PhDo, a 6 week startup night class that I have been LOVING. One of the key lessons has been about getting your idea started in the quickest, cheapest, fastest way possible.
The idea is that if you wait too long, you work on your idea in secret, you never put it in front of customers, it’s just an idea. You don’t know if it’s something they’ll want or need or appreciate. Until you reach out and touch a human being, you might as well not have done anything.
Sam, the guy running the course, coined a word. Rather than planning a digital masterpiece of an app that might take years to build, is there a simple, manual, analogue way you can solve the same problem for the same person, now. Not once you have all the resources and the app and the staff team and investment and… No. Can you help meet a need today? Start meeting a need now, help someone out, see if it’s well received, then worry about scaling the solution up for more people.
Get analoguer. Get dirty. Get doing – solve a problem today. Scale later.
I did this wrong with my School Management System app. I never met with the staff, and completely underestimated how complex the problem of tracking student attendance is. My solution was way too simplistic, and would never be adequate. The project blew out by 10 months and caused a lot of frustration as a result.
I tried to be a messiah and solve this problem, thinking it would be easy. But I never entered in and felt / understood the pain first. How can you offer help if you have not stood with people and felt their pain and understood the complexity of the problem first?
This is the difference with how Jesus chose to work. He could try solve the world’s problems from in Heaven. Or send some prophet to do the dirty work. Instead he chose to get dirty, get personal, and get in touch with those he was trying to help. Understand their pain and show his solidarity, feel the full weight and complexity of the problem, and show those facing it that you are eager to help, in any way you can, even if you get dirty doing so. Even if it means suffering with them. Even if it means dying with them.
Jesus left the ivory tower of Heaven. He was God, but put his rights as God and abilities as God behind him, he became an ordinary human, wrapped in ordinary human flesh. He got analogue.
Today is the first day of Advent – the season where we anticipate the coming of Jesus to earth, culminating in Christmas.
We join Mary in expecting the birth of the baby Messiah, the God who gave it all up to come and understand our problems and join us in this often-painful world, and resolved to help us in any way he could, no matter the cost.
And we join with the people of faith around the world expecting the second time Jesus will come, having grasped the full complexity and pain of the human condition, and having felt it for himself, he’ll be back with a solution that scales.
Until then, let’s get analoguer and show love to people, not waiting for the perfect plan, strategy or opportunity, but starting right now in a way where you get as close to the problem as you can, and give what you can today, even if it’s not a full and perfect solution.