“Salvation is a child…”
“Salvation is a child…”
“…and when it grows up it is crucified.” -Paul Tillich
Original transcript delivered November 27, 2022
I asked if I could give remarks today, being that it is the first Sunday of the Advent season. I trust most are familiar with the themes of Advent, those of Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy, and that you are familiar also with the purpose of these themes to inspire an expectation that is uniquely and characteristically Christian. We have a wonderful, shared anticipation for the coming of Christ from heaven to earth. Thank you for letting me share that feeling with you today.
It's fitting to say only this, that the things of Advent are indeed very beautiful, and what words I give to add to their beauty will fall short of their aim. Still I can't help but observe that the story of Nativity is beautiful in effect for its being a story rich with both symbol and conflict, and these two must be spoken of together.
There is the virgin, an enduring symbol of purity, who is to be the mother of the Son of God. There is, too, the old carpenter, who is called righteous. His is the wisdom of a faith that is quiet, dutiful, and self-assured.
There is the child, who is the gift of salvation. He is the prophetic fulfillment for when the might and judgment of God would take office. His entry into world history brings us all into a crisis of decision, to either receive him or reject him on the terms of the Gospels. He is Christ the Lord. He is Christ the King. And for a season he is Christ the child, perhaps appropriately called a child, who like us was given to the needs and fears and wonders of being very small in a world very big that was made for and by adults.
About the adults whose impressions last in their association with the events of Nativity, I point again to their being symbols: the innkeeper, the shepherds, and Herod. The first and second tell of how Advent interrupts business as usual. On one hand are those of us who are busy and have no room for Advent. On the other are those of us who are busy and seek the interruption of Advent.
Then there is the terrible Herod. Saying Herod is but cruelty likely least satisfies. It is the character of Herod that, unlike mothers to Mary or children to the child King, we refuse to see ourselves, and we give assurances that to kill life when life is most needing is far from us. But I believe the example of the wicked king presents a truth plain before us if even given to the skeptics who would consign Herod's plot over to religious fable. The modern reader is wont to miss the implicit task of reading fables. That is the reader passes over elements which least resemble the things about the world, to pause instead with the caricatures and anthropomorphisms of ideas in extreme form presented of either marvelous or despicable technique.
To put it plainly, our retelling of the events of Nativity must not concede to a labor of inquiry that esteems the historical process above our curiosity for the transcendental. The reality of these events as posited by the author is presented in part by the poetic device of actors at their station. We see the busy, the seeking, and the cruel, and we are well accustomed to these behaviors on account that we are very human too. The tragedy, however, is that these things toss about against the still point of the child King who is most worthy of our worship and most in danger by our programs. Extreme light took the form of the familiar, and most tragically the familiar takes the form of its extreme opposite.
If we have learned from the example of the other actors, we’ve learned we must wait for our salvation without ambition. From T.S. Eliot’s East Coker:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith…
The spirit of Advent--and dare I say of Adventism--is a deep cynicism both about the permanence of current structures and about our fit within those structures. This cynicism is at once lifted and transfigured into eschatology by many modes. We insist there is heard in Nativity the apocalyptic whimper, though its tones cannot be mined with any real certainty which I like. There is space to imagine fire and feel warm. The Great and Terrible I Told You So is unaccountable to our plans or to our suspicions. Yet if only for a season it is given over to our delight, to be swaddled, to be adored, and to need a mother. It is enough to sit in the beauty of this image to bring us into worship. Its beauty makes the burden of religion feel light.
And of course, beauty can never live long in a world where cruelty has a budget. As was provided to us in Isaiah, the image of swords into plowshares is a promise that when the Kingdom of God is realized man is neither carried off to war, nor is his labor commodified to oil the joints of war's machines. He is let alone under a most unusual reign: Christ the child is Christ the King apart from the habits to which we're accustomed of kings and politicians. His reign is the tyranny of God's goodwill. Never to decay to corruption. Never to be removed from the earth.
As is attested to you by the prophets, look now into Nativity and see the world's destination. May the Christian hope and expectation fill your homes and occupy your imaginations. I wish this church a warm and meaningful Advent season. May God's goodness and mercy follow you into what's next.