Advent and the Narratives of Life

Advent and the Narratives of Life

Waiting for the Promise

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            “Once upon a time” … so the story began. “They lived happily ever after” … so the story concluded. I don’t know enough about global literature to know if this formula for children’s stories is global or primarily a Western phenomenon. I suspect it is a Western phenomenon where children’s literature reflected the message of the Gospel around which Western civilization arose. In the Gospel we are connected to a creation account that happened long ago, and from which we have been separated. The creation seems like the once upon a time story that was lost as we went our own ways through sin. The concluding story of “they lived happily ever after” is an optimistic view of life lived under the promise of redemption to be unfolded in our future eternity. We tell the children of our Western Civilization to believe a story line whose lines are the contours of the Gospel which was proclaimed to generations of Christians.

            The greatest ideals and truths believed in our human experience are expressed in stories and narratives, because life is far too complex for any one human being or for the entire collective of humanity to gather all the possible data of reality and then to flawlessly piece every bit of information into an infallible explanation for the everything in which we exist. So we end up speaking to one another in stories and narratives. These narratives are as distinct in form and expression as our human interests and personalities are diverse. Sometimes narratives are told in the forms of laborers and housewives talking around a table while taking a break. Sometimes we write treatises, novels, plays, and poems. John, Paul, George, and Ringo sang about the way life along Penny Lane left its impact on them. Albert Einstein followed the lead of James Clerk Maxwell, as he pursued the Holy Grail of physics; the unified theory. Einstein’s narratives were written in formulas like E=mc².  Jules Breton wrote a beautiful narrative using oil on canvas; seemingly capturing a dimension of the life of a particular fisherman’s daughter:

 

            As an Anglican I participate in a tradition which regularly explores the narrative of the life of Christ within the passing seasons of a church calendar. We begin our exploration of the Christ narrative with our practice of waiting during the season of Advent. We remember how the once upon a time was abruptly ended with our ancestral transgression, our sin which brought death into the world because all have sinned. We remember how in this darkness we were called upon to wait for a promise to be fulfilled. A child was to be born into the world, a son of the woman; and he would crush the serpent once and for all. So during that time between the once upon a time and the promised son we waited. We waited while we learned to say in Latin, “Peccavi” or “I have sinned.” We waited for the one to come who would have power to crush the serpent to overcome sin and to win the battle against death. We waited.

            The prophets spoke to the promise. We waited. Temples came and went; kings lived and died and we waited. Then one day a heavenly messenger spoke to a teenage girl. He addressed her as if she were a noble, saying “Greetings to you who are highly favored.” The young girl was troubled by such a greeting. The angel then began to explain what God was planning to do. The story seems to be told in such a way as to let us know that though God’s plan was firm, He was intent on Mary understanding what was about to take place so that she could take it in and give it her full and willing consent. She did so by speaking the words, “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” With her consent the Immanuel (God with us) was to come into the world as an infant. He was to take his place in the world – God being revealed to man in human flesh, and man answering back to God in the person of Jesus Christ. He was born in Bethlehem. We waited.

            He grew as little children grew in physical, emotional, and social ways growing in stature and wisdom before God and man. We waited. He reached his twelfth birthday and he astounded teachers at the temple, not with answers but with his questions. He matured. He listened. He must have listened intently to every human story around him. He felt the concerns and thoughts, desires and fears of a generation. But he would be thirty years old before he began to speak. We waited. He spoke quietly in his home synagogue. He simply read a Scripture reading from Isaiah where God came and visited Israel and proclaimed a release of the captives in a day of jubilee. He read the brief passage and then explained it simply as it was being fulfilled in his reading of the words. We waited. If he had come to set men free, to correct the world’s injustices, why wasn’t he doing something spectacular to drive out the Romans? We thought he needed our help and tried to make him king, but he walked away and accused us of only looking out for our own interests. We waited. His ministry seemed to falter as he began being opposed by both Jewish and Roman leaders. On Palm Sunday he entered Jerusalem, by the next Friday he was being crucified. Before the Sabbath evening began at sunset he was pronounced dead by the Romans. We waited, our hopes dashed. Then on Sunday morning excited women returned to tell us he was alive. They had seen him. We waited and only gradually did we come to understand what had happened.

            He had come first to hear us, to absorb our stories, to share our human weakness and even to die our death for our sins. He had come to be our priest. When God would speak to man, it was He who spoke. When we would speak to God, it was he who would represent and express our prayers. But he represented us in every way. It was not as if our stories no longer counted, for our stories and our narratives were being brought before God the Father in and through him.

            He had come to be a prophet. He came and after listening intently to each of our stories, He spoke to our stories the Word of God. He was the enlightenment speaking to every man. Our stories which had been stalled and turned into a crisis after the “once upon a time” were now addressed by him who had listened as a priest to our narratives. He spoke now as a prophet to our stories.

            He had come to be a king. He had refused to let us make him a king for he had a kingship that went beyond any concept of king we had ever known. He had absorbed our stories, assumed our weaknesses, and had even submitted himself to be the death for our sins. He was a king to be a King like no other, a king who inherited his throne with his very own death for his people. He had accepted the cup that he had to drink. He accepted that for him to be the king of righteousness and peace and life he had to win a great battle against death and sin. He had to die for sins and to overcome death and sin in his glorious victory. He rose on the third day having tramped death unto death through his death. Other kings inherited their kingship with another’s death while he inherited his kingship through his own death. Other kings defeated human armies, conquered vast territories and shed blood in violent wars. But he laid down his life, offered his own blood, and conquered death itself. Only then did we understand why he walked away when wanted to place the crown on his head that would have perished like all other monarchs before him. The religious leaders had imagined they had silenced him, Caesar imagined his kingship was history and yet without knowing it they conspired to do the very thing that established his kingdom of life, righteousness, and peace forevermore. He rose from the dead, ascended on high and seated on the throne of grace forevermore.

            We now wait, earnestly and actively, in prayer and good deeds we wait for the day when we shall see him and we shall be like him. We wait as he comes into our lives looking for a room in which to be born into our world. He comes to our rooms filled with remaining sin asking us if he can enter and help us to clean the room for him to reside. He comes to our rooms where we lay wounded and asks if he may heal us from our wounds. He comes to our rooms where we sulk discouraged and asks us if we have room for his newness of life to take up residency. He comes to our homes in the face of a stranger asking if we have bread to spare. He comes as the refugee asking if we have a place for peace. He comes in the wounded and marginalized wondering if we have a word of encouragement. He comes from a far, like the Samaritan whose religion is you know a mongrelized perversion. He comes from near having been raised in the Gospel only to one day realize he is hearing it for the first time.

            This year more than ever I have felt how much my participation in the culture wars has tended to cause the Gospel to be hidden in obscurity. The culture warrior wants to protect us from those whom Jesus wishes to seek out. The culture warrior thanks God for not making us like those who are far off, while Jesus finds those who are far off, beating upon their breasts wondering if there is any way they may know God. The culture warrior seeks to protect an earthly kingdom and a religious empire from collapsing under the weight of its own inconsistencies. But we wait for him who comes in the promises of the Word and the Spirit and opening the pages of the Scriptures he reads to us of him who has come to set the captives free. With our attention fixed upon his quiet firm reading of the Word he tells us that in our hearing the captives have been set free. We either think his pronouncement strange or we realize that this is the Immanuel the “God with us” who in his pronouncement has proclaimed our bondage from sin and death. Either we hear nothing in his words or we hear everything so that the key unlocks the chains from our bonds and we are set free.

For the reality is that he has come to complete the stories of our life narratives which had been stalled. He has come to reconnect us to the “once upon a time” story of creation and the “happily ever after” of eternity. We are tempted to imagine that this is a story too good and too tall to be true. But in reality this is the truth which every other tale wishes it could tell.