You and I As Continuous Advents of Christ

1 Advent A      December 1, 2013

Is. 2:1-5      Psalms 122

Rom. 13:8-14   Matt. 24:37-44

Lectionary Link

    Scientia, is the Latin for science and the Greek equivalent is episteme.  They both simply mean knowledge but for us science, since the days of the Enlightenment, has come to mean a more systematic way of knowing and studying.  What we have come to refer to as modern science has changed the way people know things.

  Old science did not separate the cosmic causality of the divine from the causal connection between all things that we are able to observe.

  Modern science has brought about an incredible specialization in all fields of study as well as in all human life.  Modern science has changed how we regard our faith experience; it has changed how we read our holy books.  It has made us reassess how they are relevant to our lives today. 

  We have arrived once again to the season of Advent and we are presented with the main theme of Advent.  Advent or adventus is the translation of the Greek word parousia and this refers to what is called the Second Coming of Christ.  We who have observed satellites and space shuttles go into space and return to earth are required to process information about the Second Coming of Christ in a different way.  We can do it in a way that makes it relevant to our lives and in a way that does not diminish the presentation of it in the Bible.

  One of the outcomes of modern science is that if one has maintained a faith experience within the biblical tradition one has had to force the Bible into a very special role, it is a religious book.  Costco recently offended some, by mistakenly labeling the Bibles in the fiction category.

  The Bible in its times of composition and for most of its time of use for public recitation was a book without competitors.  The Bible for most of its history of use has not had other comparative literature.  It had exclusive use.  It was used to be a book of all knowledge and all human experience.  The Bible was ancient history, science, ritual guide, religious teaching, social studies, political science, sex education and it was something that we probably will not let it be because we have it labeled exclusively in a sacred category.  The Bible was also the main source of community entertainment.  Today we have Hollywood and many genres of literature to fine tune our entertainment sensibilities; the Bible used to be an all-purpose book.  It does not function that way anymore and so it either gets literalized as actual modern science presented in a very ridiculous ways or it gets completely shoved aside as irrelevant or obsolete or without any function except regarded to be like a weird old uncle who is kept locked in the basement most of the time and occasionally brought out for family gatherings.

    Advent or the Second Coming of Christ is something which modern scientists do not find to be good material for their study.  Modern scientists however are interested in the end of life as we know it.  The melting ice caps and rising waters, global warming, the big earthquake, a colliding comet or meteorite, the massive  volcano which will cover the sunlight for a long enough time to begin another ice age, nuclear destruction and the lack of the sustainability for the growing population of the earth; these are the endings and the transformations which interest the modern scientist.

  The science of the Bible had more to do with the human science of living together; it had more to do with what we call the art of living.  And I would say that one of the results of modern science is that it has redefined the relevance of the language of faith as a language of aesthetics, a language about the beauty, the horror, the fear, the delight, the love, the curiosity, the wonder, the doubt and the faith of living.

  It is a human truth that we are interested in origins and endings.  It is a human truth that we are interested in the past and in the future.  In the growing repository of human experience, we have many cosmologies about the ancient, ancient past and the future, near and far.  The past and the future are of great interest to us because through experience we can find out certain things.  If things are not very pleasurable, time teaches us that suffering can end and pass.  And if our experiences are really very good, time also teaches us that if we’re “riding high in April, we can be shot down in May, that’s life!”  Time teaches to be prepared for the bad times.  The experiences in time teach us to receive the best possible functional response to what we are experiencing.

  I believe that for us as Americans, the Bible provides us with a distorted view.  The biblical view is distorted for us because the biblical view is most often told from the point of view of people who are suffering.  The Bible story is not told from the point of view of people who are in control of a world Empire; it is told from the point of view of people who are suffering because the Empire has struck them again and again and kept them occupied or in exile but certainly not with majority status.

  Biblical people wanted and desired a new world order.  They desired more favorable situations so much that their published prophets were poets who wrote literature much like John Lennon’s song, Imagine.    Imagine a completely different world, one which is more favorable to our well-being. This kind of imaginary thinking is thinking which helps suffering people to maintain within their condition but not to give in to believe that pain and suffering are natural.  Imaginary thinking and utopian thinking is true thinking because it establishes peace and freedom from pain as what is truly normal.

  Biblical people struck by the Empires could not help but be political people; it is hard not to be politically angry when the Empire has a boot upon one’s throat.  The politics of the end of the old order was also the talk among those who carried the lore and traditions of their society.  We, who have modern science and many genres of entertainment and who live as free people, we have comic book superheroes of Hollywood to fuel our need for interventionist strategies against injustice and against those who make our lives fearful and threatened.  Biblical suffering people had a tradition of the apocalyptic as their politics and as their hope for a future instant interventionist to establish justice in this world.  We have the luxury to be entertained by comic book heroes; biblical people needed the Apocalyptic Son of Man and theories of being whisk away as a way to continue to believe in justice and God’s favor towards them.

  You and I live in a world Empire, the American Empire.  We cannot identify with the experience which generated most of the biblical literature.  So what can we do, we who have inherited modern science and who live relatively comfortable lives?

  During this Advent, let us make it our calling to be the many comings of Christ to this world.  Let us be the Christ working to beat swords to ploughshares.  Let us be the Christ of peace to the world. Let us be those who come and whisk away people from their poverty and their human need.

  Let us not limit Christ to a first or second coming.  Let us celebrate that in the giving of the Holy Spirit the risen Christ has come to live within the church.  And each of us who know the presence of Christ is to take the presence of Christ into our world.  Each of us is to be another Advent of Christ.   Each one of us is to be another coming of Christ to make his love and justice actual to the people of our lives.  Amen.