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How God decided to enter the world matters… how God came be among us as human matters… where and when God chose to come into the world carries significance.

This Advent (this time of waiting for the Child), we are going to talk about the how, when, where, and why of the coming of God into our world. We are using the theme: What Child Is This?

What we know about the time of Jesus’s birth is that it all started in a time of darkness and danger. Generations of Jewish people suffered at the hands of one empire or another. First the Greeks, then the Egyptians, then the Seleucids and others. They enslaved women and children. In the 400 years before Jesus was born, the Jews were in Babylonian exile – captured, ruled and abused by the Babylonians.

This is the time right before the birth of Jesus. That is why we have Advent: a time of waiting. In our world, we too experience troubled times, either personally or in our communal lives. It is a spiritual experience to ask these universal questions:

  • How do we hold on to hope in such a time?

  • Do we keep waiting for relief to come, for the fire to be relit?

  • Or do we try to hasten its arrival?


Hear these words from the Hebrew Bible, words of lamentation, words of lament:

 

All our enemies
have opened their mouths against us;

panic and pitfall have come upon us,

devastation and destruction.

My eyes flow with rivers of tears
because of the destruction of my people.

My eyes will flow without ceasing,
without respite,
until the Lord from heaven
looks down and sees.

 

My eyes cause me grief
at the fate of all the young women in my city.

 

Those who were my enemies without cause
have hunted me like a bird;


they flung me alive into a pit
and hurled stones on me;


water closed over my head;
I said, “I am lost.”

I called on your name, O Lord,
from the depths of the pit;

you heard my plea, “Do not close your ear
to my cry for help, but give me relief!”

You came near when I called on you;

you said, “Do not fear!”

Lamentations 3:46-57

How do we handle deep darkness in our lives? Time when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel?

  • Times when we learn the diagnosis is terminal?

  • Times when our government seems corrupt?

  • Times when our spouse or child is out of control and we do not know how to respond?

  • Times when things at work are at an impasse?

  • Times when our neighbors are exasperating and we have tried everything imaginable to get along?

  • Times when we feel as if we have extended the olive branch so many times that there is nothing left to do to heal a relationship?

 

How do we hold on to hope? What happens when God appears to be silent for much too long? This is what it means to wait in Advent hope.
This is what the people of Israel have experienced over the millennia in their faith. They are accustomed to waiting for God to speak and for God to
answer their prayers. They have suffered indignity as a people for far too
many generations.

And, lesser known to the Western Hemisphere, the people of Palestine have also suffered some indignities of living in the same area and suffering over many years.

The place where Jesus was born is a land that the Jewish people and the Palestinian people hold in common: a land that they hold in common. The land of Advent still throbs with intense pain. The ongoing trauma experienced by both Israeli and Palestinian communities’ makes it difficult to see the other’s humanity and makes violence more likely.

I have been there. On both sides of the checkpoints and the cement bunkers. Everyone is afraid. Kindergarten children are escorted to school by guards with AK47s. Everyone still hungers for liberation and light, for God to arrive again ith a lasting peace. Our son, who traveled to Israel on an all-expense paid trip with an Israeli Political Action Committee, was a witness to the Israeli man who designated the separating wall between a preschool and a bunker say, “I designated this wall to keep people apart. I hope to live long enough to see it torn down.”

The first advent was about the arrival of God into a world of woe, and every advent since invites us to grapple with what Jesus’s coming means to our fraught landscapes now A vital part of the first advent and every advent since must be to wrestle with those who are harmed by imperial oppressors.

In the Christian tradition, we are told about Caesar declared a census was needed. What you may not know is that many ha declared that Caesar was the savior of the world, the one who ended the cycles of endless war. The way he had accomplished this peace was through crushing victory and violent control of the people under his rule. Here is our Biblical story:

 

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This as the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. Luke 2:1-5

Caesar’s census was not about demographic numbers; it was a count of livestock, crops, and people who could pay taxes. IT was an inventory of wealth that allowed the empire to further spread the burden of taxation. A census was always bad news for the poor, never lightening their load. From time to time, though, a census was known to ignite rebellion.

Please note the repeated word in the text: registered. That indicates that the government was preoccupied with taxation. The author of Luke is creating a picture for his readers of the world into which Jesus was born: it was a world of economic hardship where there was an oppressive ruler. There is no exemption from this oppression – not even for a woman whose child is nearly crowning.

It was against this backdrop of unfair taxation that God entered. Salvation entered. And the kind of deliverance Luke suggests is one that deals with realities like the hunger for daily bread, fear of land loss, the search for work, and the burden of indebtedness. For Luke, the economy is front and center in his advent narrative. It is into this world that God arrives to bring justice and peace.

We can begin to understand God’s advent when our Jewish friends light the first candle on the menorah, inviting us into the dark and holy space where we sit in solidarity with others and await relief, maybe even a deliverer together. And advent carries with it the scars of Palestinians from decade of violence and relinquished hopes in the land. In Advent, we learn that God is always coming into our troubled times. Next week, I will share with you our experience of going to Bethlehem in the West Bank.