As early as Genesis the narrator tells us that God told the serpent that eventually - sooner or later - a descendant of the woman would crush his head.
And then the story continues with rather little reference to this statement of future reality. The descendants of Adam seem to carry on their lives as people would. Eventually, being far enough removed from Adam's experience, the knowledge of God and his expectations for human life becomes muddled at best. Our next major player is Abram a son in a Mesopotamian family that worshiped their local gods. The story is told with anticipation but the major player is a Pagan, selected by God to bring blessing to the world.
This Abrahamic story has its own ups and downs and while God makes appearances, those appearances seem to not have the impact they might have had. Abraham and Sarah for instance, think that the promise might need a bit of help and so they decide that maybe Hagar could jump-start the fulfillment of the promise of an heir and an ongoing progeny. After all, the couple had been told that their descendants would be a vast people and well, old people don't have kids. Turns out these two acted as humans would, who are beginning to doubt this promise.
Eventually, Isaac is born and fathers Jacob, a second-born cheater who is assisted in subterfuge by Isaac's wife. This displacing of Esau we are told is the design, the intent of God. Throughout the story, we find that God has a penchant for picking the least likely, the second dog to accomplish what He wants. As we read the story the narrator provides us some asides about relation and history, but the storyline seems to be a standard human one, reflecting an over-time forgetting of God and how He wants His people to live.
We find in the prophets not only the terrible ways the nations around Israel behaved but we are also told that Israel herself had become completely corrupt from head to foot; from the king to the most distant and poor Hebrew. Obviously, these sorts of characterizations are general statements because the prophets are in Israel at this time. Even so, the nation as a whole could be described as corrupt, putrid, exactly the opposite of who they were to be. They had in fact completed the absolute forgetting of who their God was - and who they were. Her third king - the wisest man on earth we are told, granted with wisdom by God Himself and allowed to build the house of YHWH, married foreign wives, and supported the establishment and worshiping of their gods.
The story provided by the prophets is one that looks a lot like today. "Where is this God? Does He see anything? Why does He not act?" Politicians, clerics, and rich folk of all types lived and did whatever they wanted. Were there some moral expectations of God? Yeah, maybe but there's not any real reason to modify our own behaviors according to them because really, has anyone seen this God recently?
With her return from Exile, Israel has completed her Scriptures and has become much more a monotheistic nation than she had been. She never however actually achieves the position, the power she once had in the world, and her corporate behavior doesn't seem to improve much at all. Monotheistic yes, but who cares? The last book in the Protestant Canon of the Hebrew Scriptures tells us that the day of the Lord is coming and it will be hard for any man to stand before it. Even after return, after redemption, after reconciliation, Israel never experiences the promises of renewal.
We have an estimated four hundred year intermission from the writing of this last entry in the Hebrew Scriptures before the birth of a child in Bethlehem. But before we get there, we need to acknowledge that Israel did exist in fits and starts as a separate nation with the most famous period under the Maccabees. Their revolt and short-lived state make an appearance in the life of Jesus when he attends the Feast of Lights. When the next installment of the story opens we have the birth of this child and even here there is great intrigue with the political and eventually the religious leaders of Israel refusing to accept this birth as the promised Head-Crusher, coming to redeem their own nation, their own lives, their own futures.
This child we will eventually be told is the Great One, the Redeemer, the Messiah that the nation should have been waiting for but she wasn't. The nation's leaders have to be told by travelers from the East who have been waiting and watching - maybe as long as two years since the birth. Israel though was not waiting for the coming of her king. There were some groups in Israel who were chafing under Roman rule and wanting an independent theocracy established, but these were looking for political and military solutions that they could effect like the brothers Maccabee had done. This time though, they'd do it right. Others had withdrawn to more remote areas and established what seems to have been ascetic communities of true believers, as they considered themselves. These would read the Scriptures and try to re-establish at least some modicum of a true community.
When Jesus comes, he comes to an Israel much like any other country. There were some looking for a fight or a setting of things right, but most people were going about their days and lives as most people on this planet have always done. He builds a following based on healings, feedings, and popular teachings that seemed to draw on underlying moral and religious teachings that resonated with the run of the mill Jew who still had some conscience of their religion and how their current situation didn't match what they had been told about who they were or how they were to live. Their religious leaders aligned themselves in schools and while they seemed to know the Law, the common person didn't accrue any of the benefits of the nation while being expected to toe the religious line given to them.
Jesus's reputation grows and he seems to have had multitudes follow him around the countryside. So many people and so often that he has to look for times and places to be alone. Surely, feeding, healing, and working signs would draw a crowd, especially if what he was saying was making the distinction between the haves and have nots favor the have nots from a moral view. Not that they were morally righteous but they were on the receiving end of rulers and leaders who certainly weren't. This would have sounded like humanistic and popular rhetoric and as such, it drew a crowd - and created enemies.
Jesus's disciples and His close associates weren't any more clued in than was anyone else. More than once, Jesus seems to be frustrated with their failure to have picked up on what the underlying message and just who He was. They may have thought He was Messiah, even the Son of God, but these were all couched in social and political expectations. Two of them for example will want to be selected to be the Big Cheese next to Jesus, and Peter will deny Him three times in the face of political failure. Not only was Israel not waiting for Messiah but those who should have known better were still figuring out how this could pay off for them.
Whatever the Hebrew Scriptures predicted, whatever those from the East expected, it wasn't the incarnated God of the universe. Not only did Israel miss the more mundane coming, but she missed the very presence of God on her streets.
How about us? Are we any better? Yes, we have the completed narrative, we have the story told to us and a description of this Jesus as that incarnated God, but do we believe it? Looking around today, it seems that we continue to live our lives just as any common person does. Our politicians and religious leaders continue to espouse moral beliefs but their lives reveal greater interest in self-promotion, in abuse of power, in disdain for the hoi polloi. Political intrigue is played out in front of us not just in Washington and state capitals, but even in national conventions of churches. Not a single (major) Christian denomination has been free of such intrigue and maneuvering for even ten years. The situation in the halls of Congress and even city administrations has been no better - despite the profession of various faiths by those in power.
Advent refers mostly to the coming birth of Jesus, but in the history of the church, Advent has taken on a current-day focus; a focus that looks to the Second Coming, the final Day of the Lord before which no person will be able to stand. The first coming has come and gone and we either acknowledge, remember, and live in light of it or we confess that our lives are not shaped by it; that we have missed it just as surely as if we had lived in Jerusalem in AD 30. The second is coming just as quietly, just as unannounced, just as miss-able as the first. Oh yes, we have stories of horses on clouds, of trumpets blaring, of judgment scenes. But these arrive too late for those who aren't waiting, who aren't prepared, who just live our lives as though the world sets the rules. We are told to keep watch, to remain alert for a reason.
While we remind ourselves to be expectant, have we in fact missed the coming and the presence of God on our streets, just as Israel missed Messiah. As we light our Advent candles in our churches and in our homes, are we going through the motions, or are we actively looking to see Jesus, the Son of God, the Incarnate One who truly brings life through death, resurrection through dying? Do we see Him well enough to be Him?
Comments
Post a Comment