Advent and Heaven's Hierarchy

Advent and Heaven’s Hierarchy

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            One of the benefits of considering the life of Christ through a historic church calendar is that our differing perspectives regarding the well-known seasonal narratives can be discussed around a table where despite the different perspectives we begin to see how others perceive the same narrative in a way that gives them the understanding expressed differently than I would express it. We might then be in a position to help one another see the narrative with a fresh perspective. During Advent we see in the narratives of the season the coming of God’s kingdom into the world of our earthly humanity. Within the Christian community there are many pain filled hotly expressed debates argued out among conservative, progressive, complementarian, egalitarian, feminist, hierarchical and non-hierarchical Christians that soon hardly anyone in one camp can safely speak to another in another camp. But if we were all looking together at a narrative from which all of our perspectives to some degree have been born we could begin to see how each of us drew the lines from the narratives we jointly love to the perspectives that we find important markers of our understanding of the divine narrative. During Advent we will consider how seeing the Word become flesh leads us to think of the Word of God, or of how Joseph and Marys’ desire to find a place where the child can be born teaches us about the kingdom of heaven looking for a place, or how the infant hidden beneath the baby bump yearns to be born. All of these images are images not merely of sentimental pictures of humanity to be part of a Christmas pageant, but all these stories are the stories that tell us how God’s heavenly kingdom was brought to life on the earth. As we look at these narratives from our varied Christian camps of understanding we have the opportunity to step back from the narrative with our varied perspectives and to look upon how each other sees the narrative and responds to it from their hearts and souls. It is possible from such an experience to come together from our varied perspectives to see in each other’s struggle an element of the narrative that has resounded in persons whose perspective seemed at first incompatible with my own. The conversation focused on the narrative of the season becomes far more civil and encouraging between partners sharing the experience of the season’s narrative.

 

Christmas tree at the NYC Metropolitan Art Museum December 2014, narrative of the season

 

            I was raised on a farm. Farms are places where conservative traditions tend to be entrenched into our ways of doing things. Farm life often seemed to be viewed through the reality that it makes sense for some jobs to be done by men who are taller and stronger than the women, while women concentrated on the side of life which seemed to be more dictated by what we imagined were women’s roles. It is a way of thinking that is often farmed into the boy long after the boy has been taken off the farm.  But even on a farm one will occasionally find a story which when thought about would challenge one’s assumptions that had become assumed to be eternal realities. Sometimes there are inconsistencies on a farm that no one even thinks about as lessons for how human life may not be so easy as the rules we want to build around it.

I remember working for one farmer putting up hay. The farmer had a daughter, a year younger than I, if I remember correctly. We will keep her anonymous and use the letter “G” to represent “G” for the gal of this story. If you knew “G” away from the farm you would have known a fairly conservative thoughtful soft spoken young woman. She wouldn’t enter many debates and her conversation would tend to be reflective of the sort of person who looked for a way to be supportive and encouraging. At least that is how I remember her although I didn’t know her extremely well. But almost everyone who ever spoke of her, spoke with the sort of respect with which I remember her. She was attractive, about 5’3” or 5’4” and weighing perhaps a little more than a hundred pounds. She was the sort of gal that tended to be overlooked as one sought for a flashier kind of attractiveness. But if you knew her on the farm you would discover a different dimension from the way she appeared away from the farm. She was a farm girl that could work a full day putting up hay without a second thought about it. There really weren’t that many gals, especially her size who would stack hay for an entire day. Stacking hay wasn’t thought of as woman’s work on the farm. A gal might feed the cattle with a bale or two of hay, but spending the whole afternoon stacking bales of hay in a barn wasn’t generally woman’s work. But “G” did exactly that. I can almost imagine how she got into that habit. It wasn’t likely that her dad planned that for her. It was more like the scene of the final shot being set up in the championship game in the movie “Hoosiers.” The coach sets up a play where he will use his star player as a decoy. With the other team’s defense focused on the star, they would try to get another player in the open for an easier shot. The team is ready to do the coach’s play but the star softly but confidently says to the coach “I can make the shot.” I kind think that is how “G” may have started putting up hay. I think her dad saw her stacking hay bales and probably said, “You don’t need to do that.” I think she probably just looked back at him and said “I can do this.” After that it was settled.

 

Life is often traditional in farm country (Sun setting on the prairie near Delavan, Illinois)

 

The issues of hierarchy, gender roles, traditions and church institutions are big gathering points on the internet of inflammatory rhetoric. I know my blog will not settle these issues. But I suspect a civil conversation where participants begin to draw the lines from their consideration of the narratives underlying our thoughts with the beliefs and perspectives we carry into life might provide a good starting point to understanding one another. The narrative of Advent remembers and looks forward to how God’s Kingdom was to be brought down into earth’s humanity. It especially is a time when we can look at the narrative of the season of Advent and realize it has a lot to say to us about Heaven’s hierarchy whatever might be our understanding of hierarchy from God’s designed plan to the evil conspiracy of men waging war against women using the church and state. At advent we remember how the kingdom of God first came to be established on earth. It came first in a promise, then it became hidden in a woman that had a baby bump, then he was born in Bethlehem after no room could be found at the inn. We look forward also to another coming of the heavenly kingdom. The city of God shall descend into the midst of the earth and men and women will come into that city at their leisure throughout eternity. The heavenly kingdom will no longer be understood as something up there but as something that has descended here and is among us. Advent teaches us to rethink what we look for when we look for Heaven’s hierarchy.

 

Advent teaches us that the kingdom of heaven came into a world when a woman said yes to a child being born.

 

Everything we imagined about the heavenly hierarchy was transformed when God entered humanity in the birth of Jesus Christ. The two tables of the Law seemed fixed in their distance from one another. A man had responsibilities to God to love him with all heart, soul, mind, and strength and a secondary obligation to love neighbor as self. But with the birth of Christ here was one who was God to be loved with all heart, soul, mind, and strength; but he was also man to be loved as we love neighbor as we love ourselves. The distance between our duties to God and to man evaporated. They were brought together in one person, Jesus of Nazareth; Son of God, Son of Mary.”

Heaven’s hierarchy therefore now speaks to us in amended ways from what was known before the promised one was born of the woman. We imagine hierarchy as speaking from sacred Scriptures, unanimity of Bishops in agreement, authoritative church confessions, from the authority of pulpits and encyclicals. But now the heavenly kingdom and its authority is expressed in the needs of a pregnant woman needing a place to give birth. It is spoken in an infant hidden beneath a baby bump yearning to be birthed. It is expressed in the pangs of hunger and the feelings of thirst and in the needs of poverty crying out to be met. The heavenly kingdom’s hierarchy is now spoken in the refugee fleeing terror and tyranny so as to find a peaceful place in which the family might live. The kingdom’s hierarchy speaks in those persecuted for righteousness’ sake fleeing all their possessions in order to find security while offering prayers of forgiveness for their persecutors because that is what their Savior did for them. Advent teaches us to look for the heavenly kingdom’s hierarchy not only in the high and mighty but in the meek and lowly. Advent teaches us that the kingdom of heaven speaks with authority from the rocks and trees, from the earth and skies, and leads us to pray “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray this way for his kingdom has come and it is coming and this is what we remember to see and believe while waiting during the Advent season.