Reclaiming Jesus (2)

Here's another excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is another part of the chapter on Jesus. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. A Kindle version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.
  
I recall growing up in church and always seeing various portraits of Jesus hanging on the walls.  As a child, I assumed that Jesus was a white man with flowing locks of hair, who always wore a white robe and always had a look of calm on his face.  More often than not, Jesus would be pictured with little children and young animals around him in a representation of peace and tranquility.  A confrontational Jesus would never have crossed my mind.

           

But over the years that I have spent reading the Gospels, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus was a confrontational person, who was vastly concerned with the social injustices of his day.  Jesus was not simply a teacher of spirituality as we like to make him out to be.  Nor was he some divine figure who went about Galilee healing people.  He was certainly both of these, but Jesus was also a political figure, whose words and deeds challenged the unjust political powers of his time.

           

This is not to suggest that Jesus was a politician in the way we think about politics today, nor is it to suggest that Jesus advocated a religious form of government.  Such already existed in the ancient world as no known civilization existed apart from religion having an indivisible relationship with the state.  Nor should we think of Jesus as seeking to involve himself in any political power system, whether the secular power of Rome or the religious power of the temple leadership.   Indeed, we know very well that Jesus worked outside and in opposition to the standing power of both Roman authorities and the religious leadership of Jerusalem.

           

What I mean by saying that Jesus was a political figure is that his message and his mission confronted the social structures of his day with the politics of God.  In other words, when we talk about Jesus, we need to take very seriously that Jesus’ message was fraught with challenges to the politics of his day; his was a subversive politics.  While eventually crucified in an act of cooperation between the two power centers he confronted, Jesus’ teachings were not primarily about sin and salvation, heaven and hell.  His central message was a new politic, a new way of existing in human society. His politics were the politics of compassion and justice, and central to his political message was his belief and his proclamation that God’s kingdom was coming into the world; a kingdom that was a subversive revolutionary resistance to the Roman Empire and the religious ruling elite of Judaism.

           

Thus, instead of seeking worldly political power through violence, domination, and oppression, which Jesus and others witnessed first- hand from the Roman Imperial power, and instead of acquiescing with the practice of violence, domination, and oppression as the religious leaders of Israel did as a way of satisfying Rome enough to keep their places of religious power,  Jesus called for a new politic, one that was shaped by the character and presence of God’s rule and one that was manifested in the radical living of his disciples.[1]

           

While most scholars do agree that the central theme of Jesus’ teaching was the rule of God, there is much disagreement about what Jesus meant by this term.  Again, the scholarly debates on this issue are too complex for my purposes here.  But, before we seek an answer to the question about what Jesus meant by the phrase “kingdom of God”, it might be helpful first to dismiss assumptions we might have about the character of God’s kingdom. In other words, these are the understandings we commonly have about the kingdom that are uninformed and incorrect.

           

First, the kingdom of God is not primarily a spiritual realm. It is spiritual in that it comes from God, but it is not heaven, as we might often think, and getting to some place called heaven is not the purpose of following Christ.  Second, the kingdom of God is not primarily about personal spirituality. God’s coming kingdom does transform us personally and in our Christian living we live as individuals who are in a personal relationship to God, but the kingdom of God cannot be reduced merely to personal spirituality.

           

What we need to understand about the meaning of the phrase, as Jesus used it, is that the term itself is politically charged. Jesus did not randomly pick this metaphor; he chose it as a challenge to the Roman imperial power that carried out injustice. He viewed the rule of God as coming into the word as the dynamic presence of God’s love, compassion and justice.  In calling people to enter the kingdom of God and follow him, Jesus was calling people to join an alternative empire, the Empire of God, over which God ruled and in which there was an alternative way of living in community with others.

           

What Jesus was doing through his ministry was calling people out of an existence that focused on the power of this world into a community over which God ruled as king.  And he was calling them to offer their allegiance to God and not Caesar.  This was the significance of confessing Jesus as Lord in the Roman Empire. Such a confession in the Roman world signified that one was no longer giving loyalty to Caesar or to the Roman system of domination, oppression, violence, and injustice. Confession of Jesus as Lord was not just a conversion experience in the way that we think of today as an individualized spiritual transformation; it was much more. Confessing Jesus as Lord was a transformation of the person from allegiance to one way living to another way of living.  It was an act of insubordination against the so-called supremacy of the world’s strongest power and an embrace of the call of Jesus to take up the cross and follow him. Joining the Jesus movement meant standing in opposition to worldly powers that carried out oppression, violence, and injustice.

           

Yet, the alternative kingdom Jesus was ushering into the world could not, in reality, face up to the power of Rome. Jesus and his followers were never significant challengers of Rome’s military power, and Christians in the empire remained outsiders for centuries, and were, at various points, persecuted by the Roman authorities. In fact, joining the Jesus movement could quite possibly lead a person to death. From a worldly perspective, then, this Jesus movement, and Jesus’ message about God’s kingdom, would be seen as an inevitable failure. After all, was not the movement’s leader put to death on a Roman cross?  So how does the rule of God, which Jesus proclaimed as near, continue to come into the world, since the bearer of God’s rule was put to death?  God’s kingdom continues to manifest itself in the world through the followers of Jesus who seek a different way of living and relating to others, both neighbors and enemies.

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[1]
          The classic text on the politics of Jesus is John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus.  Various other scholars have approached Jesus as a political figure, including John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg.

Reclaiming Jesus

Here's another excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is part of the chapter on Jesus. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. A Kindle version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

 

From its inception, Christianity has been christocentric, that is, the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus are central to the Christian faith.  Indeed, there is nothing more central to Christianity than how we understand Jesus.  This does not mean that Christians have always had a homogeneous view of Jesus, but in all the various forms of Christianity that have developed since the first century, Jesus has always been the central figure.

         

Yet, Jesus remains a somewhat enigmatic figure, whose life has been written about by thousands of authors, scholars, and lay persons alike.  Moreover, Jesus’ teachings still speak to our modern world and how we live in that world.  This means that each Christian generation must not only reaffirm the centrality of Jesus to the faith, and therefore seek to rediscover Jesus, each must also seek to understand and implement Jesus’ life and teachings in each and every context; a task that is often treated as easy, but when attempted with any seriousness, is very difficult.

         

Who was this Jesus?  What do the Gospels tell us about Jesus?  Does Jesus’ life and words have meaning for us, and if so, how do we appropriate them for our own living as his followers in the contemporary world?  These are the questions we must address if Jesus is to remain the central figure of Christian faith.

One significant point that must be made from the outset is that Jesus was a first century Jew.  While most today know this to be true, an appreciation of the influence of Judaism on the life and mission of Jesus has only recently become important.  Many Christians might agree that Jesus was Jewish, but they may see Jesus’ Jewish faith and identity only as a precursor to his founding of the Christian faith.  Indeed, in my years of teaching, I have often asked this question on an exam: “What religious faith was Jesus?”  The majority of students answer that Jesus was Christian.  But Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and remained so throughout his life.  Jesus never was what we consider to be Christian.

         

Yet, when we say that Jesus was a Jew, we must be careful to point out that this does not assume that Judaism was homogeneous in the first century.  Much like Judaism today, and Christianity for that matter, first century Judaism was eclectic.  While scholars have recognized the importance of the four dominant sects within Second Temple Judaism, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots, the largest population within Judaism, and the one Jesus was from, was the common Jews, the am haaretz, the people of the land. 

         

The Gospels clearly indicate that Jesus was not from one of the ruling groups of Judaism, the Pharisees or Sadducees.  While it is possible that the Essenes, that sectarian community believed to be responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls, had an influence on John the Baptist, who then influenced Jesus, there is no convincing evidence that Jesus was associated with the Essenes.  And, it is highly unlikely that Jesus was a Zealot, for his teachings on peace and non-violence is not parallel to their ideas about revolution.  Jesus was born into poverty and remained a member of the common class of Jews living in the volatile world of first century Palestine. 

         

As a Jew, however, Jesus held in common with other Jews that the God of Israel, who had been revealed through creation and covenant, was the supreme God who had chosen Israel and had redeemed them out of Egypt.  Jesus, like many of the Jews of his day, was looking for God’s new redemption of Israel from the chains of their oppressors.  He was looking for a New Exodus, not from the enemies in Egypt, but from the power of Rome.  He accepted the traditions passed down through Israel’s history that God had set Israel apart as God’s people and had made a covenant with them to be their God.  He also believed that Israel had lost her way, as all the prophets testified, and that Israel’s current plight would only be ended by an act of God.  So, at one level Jesus’ consciousness of God was influenced by tradition.

Yet, we also must consider that Jesus’ awareness of God was also greatly informed by his own experience of God.  Indeed, though he, like many Jews of his day, believed God was going to redeem Israel from Roman oppression, he took on this vocation as his very own mission.  While we can point to various events in the life of Jesus that shaped his experience and understanding of God, as well as his own understanding of himself, including his upbringing under the weight of poverty and injustice and his constant encounter with the suffering of his own people, the Gospels suggest that one specific event seems to have played a particular role as the call to mission for Jesus.  In his own baptism, Jesus witnesses the opening of heaven and hears God’s commission for him to live out his identity as God’s chosen son, the one sent to bring judgment on God’s enemies of unjust power and oppression, and restoration to God’s people.  This religious experience perhaps gave affirmation to Jesus as to who he needed to be and what he needed to do.

         

But, in his experience of God, Jesus became cognizant of a God that could not be defined by tradition.  While he accepted the traditional Jewish views of God, monotheism, creation, and covenant, he also gained, in his own experience of God, an alternative to the tradition.  So what did Jesus believe about God? 

         

Foremost in Jesus’ mind was the belief that God was presently acting in the world to bring about something new that would radically shift the Judaism of his day.  Nothing clarifies this more than Jesus’ announcement that the kingdom of God had come.  Later is this chapter, we will turn attention to the concept of God’s kingdom in the teachings of Jesus, but for now I think it very right to assume that Jesus believed that God was not simply the God of Israel’s history who had somehow become distant.  Rather, Jesus’ God was now present in the world, overthrowing the powers of evil and establishing God’s own rule.

         

Jesus believed that God was establishing a new order in the world, one that reversed the oppressive power of injustice and inaugurated a world of compassion, justice, and peace.  In Jesus’ mind, the world had become chaotic, oppressive, and filled with injustice.  But he believed that God was presently restoring order and justice to the creation, and Jesus acted on this understanding of God.  His miracles serve as vivid metaphors of God’s power to release the captives and to overthrow the powers of the world, and his teachings proclaimed a new ethic that would continue to bring order and justice to creation.  In this sense, Jesus lived out his vocation as the envoy of God’s rule.

         

But Jesus also understood and communicated that God was not concerned with the formal religion that was practiced in Israel, apart from the ethical living demanded by God, particularly having love for one’s neighbors and enemies.  While he did not seek to abolish the Law, as he came to fulfill the Law, he did challenge the assumptions others had about the Law, that it was merely the outward pious actions of the religious.  Instead, Jesus declared that God was concerned about the inner being of a person and the motivations of a person’s heart that produced acts of goodness.

         

It seems clear from reading the Gospels that Jesus’ most severe challenge was aimed at the formal religion of his day, and more particularly at the religious elite that controlled religion, when he cleared the temple.  It may not have been the temple itself, or the sacrificial system within its walls that Jesus found troubling, although certainly it very well could have been.  What seems certain, however, was that Jesus was angry at the abuses that resulted from a religion that was more about ritual than about caring for others.  Indeed, many have pointed to the fact that this is the action that got Jesus killed, for he called for the temple to be a house of prayer for all people, opening the doors to those shut out from the worship of God.  In this way, he challenged the religious system of first century Judaism that was structured around purity laws that shut people out from the worship of God, and he viewed the temple as that which symbolized the religious formalism of his day. Indeed, his actions in the temple signify his direct claim to speak and act with the authority of God, challenging those who set themselves up as God’s authorities.

Believing in God: An Advent Reflection

The biblical stories are replete with calls to believe and people who choose to believe or not to believe in God. Of course, the more familiar expression we use in speaking of this act of believing is to have faith. Whether we read stories of individuals in Israel’s history, or ancient Israel’s history as a nation, or whether we read the narratives surrounding the coming of Jesus, we are always reading about people who either had faith or about those who did not have faith.

When Jesus arrives on the scene in Mark’s Gospel, after his own experience of God’s presence in his baptism and immediately after his temptation in the wilderness, he proclaims his central message that God’s rule is near, and he calls on those who heard his message to respond, first through repentance and then by believing.  Specifically, he called them to believe in the gospel of God. In doing so, Jesus was calling them not only to believe in the existence of God, but to believe that God was now among them through his own presence, and to believe that in his advent, the beginning of the end of injustice and oppression had arrived.

Yet when we consider the concept of faith, the act of believing, our modern minds tend to focus more on an intellectual agreement with some idea or proposition. Often, when we talk about faith, we speak of faith in terms of our intellectual faith; believing this proposition to be true, or that statement of faith to be true. Indeed, for many Christians, believing in certain theological statements is equivalent to believing in God. 

But when Jesus announced the coming of God’s rule and called people to believe in the gospel of God, was he calling them to agree intellectually with this? The initial answer to this question is yes.  Faith, any faith, requires us to believe with our minds that something is true. But faith cannot end with our intellectual belief in God and what we think God is doing. Jesus called those who heard his message, as well as those who continue to hear his message, to a belief that is more than simply mental conformity to God’s rule. He called and continues to call folks to the actions of faith.

This is why the act of repentance is tied to the act of belief. Repentance is more than a change of one’s mind. Repentance is a continual change in one’s behavior based on hearing from God. So too, believing involves the actions of the whole self being oriented toward God and God’s purposes. If we truly believe God is doing something in our world, then we will demonstrate that belief through our participation in God’s work. If we do not participate in God’s work, then we fail to believe. 

As Christians, we often give lip service to our faith. We say we believe certain ideas about God, Jesus, the Bible, and humanity, and we somehow convince ourselves that this makes us faithful. But this is nothing more than cheap faith, to borrow slightly from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As James rightly states, “Faith without works is dead.” Faith that does not produce actions is not faith at all. The kind of belief to which Jesus calls us is a radical belief; a faith through which we are no longer being conformed to a self-centered way of living, but we are being transformed by the gospel of God. 

To have faith is not to believe certain things about God or Jesus. Rather, to have a radical faith in God is to abandon all our desires and replace them with what God desires in our world. It is a call to hear what God wants from us, a call to repent from our selfish living and our long held, but often misguided, assumptions about what we think about God, and a call to believe in what God is doing now.   

And what God is doing now for our world is captured in the story of Christmas; a story about a deliverer who came to set the captives of oppression free and to bring peace, joy, and hope to all. A faithful response to the Christmas story, a true act of believing, is not simply hearing the story and wishing these things to be true for the world. To believe the story, to believe in the gospel of God, is to bring to reality the peace, joy and hope God desires for the world through our acts of justice and mercy.

Reclaiming the Bible

Here's another short excerpt from my book, Reframing a Relevant Faith. This portion is part of the chapter on the Bible. You can purchase the book from the publisher at http://direct.energion.co/reframing-a-relevant-faith or through Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Reframing-Relevant-Faith-Drew-Smith/dp/1631991213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418159944&sr=1-1&keywords=reframing+a+relevant+faith. An e-version is also available at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=reframing%20a%20relevant%20faith%20kindle.

Regardless of which Christian tradition we call our own, the sacred texts of the Bible are always central to that tradition.  While we may affirm different canons of scripture, all families within the Christian faith have great reverence for the scriptures and view them as having a vital place of authority in shaping Christian belief and practice.  Yet, we must realize that the texts of scripture never stand on their own. The Bible does not interpret itself, but must be interpreted by those who read the text; those situated in various times and places who seek to grasp what these texts say about God.

         

There are many reasons people may read the Bible, e.g., historical or literary, but the ultimate and constant reason for reading the Bible is theological. Most who read the text, or hear the text read, believe it to have something to say about God and God’s engagement with humanity.  Indeed, the Bible exists, both in its parts and in its whole, not primarily for historical or literary purposes, but because both the parts and the whole of the Bible offer the historically situated authors’ views on God and how God relates to humanity.  In other words, the authors of the different books of the Bible present primarily a theological perspective of life from their own world. 

         

But the very existence of the Christian sacred texts from any and every tradition indicates that the stories of the Bible are not just about the events, characters, and times of their own era.  These stories extend beyond their own frame of reference to communicate a belief in God’s good future in which each generation can find hope in the midst of the challenges of human existence.

         

So, if the primary purpose for writing the books of the Bible and for reading these books is theological, then how should we read these ancient texts that were written by historically situated humans who would not have envisioned the world in which we live?  Do we take what they say about God at face value, or should we be open to fresh understandings of God?  Answering these questions fully would take more space than allotted here, but I want to offer at least a rudimentary approach to reading the scriptures theologically.

         

One important step to reading the Bible theologically is to embrace a critical approach to biblical interpretation.  In other words, we can extend our critical approach to the Bible past simply asking questions about the history of the Bible, to asking questions about what the Bible says.  A critical approach to reading scripture is not only appropriate, it is also necessary when one is seeking to develop relevant theological thinking.

         

A critical approach involves several components that contribute to viable and meaningful interpretations.  Reading the Bible critically means not only giving close attention to the literary nature of the text, and to the genre of a specific text, but also to the historically conditioned nature of the biblical texts and the authors who penned them. These authors, and the texts they produced, reflect a different worldview than ours.  They viewed the cosmos differently, history differently, and the experience of the divine differently.  Thus, any faithful readings, and the theology that develops from those readings, must take into account the assumptions these authors had that we no longer have. While developing our theology from the scriptures must demonstrate integrity with the historical meaning of the text, our readings are not bound by those original meanings as we seek to bring theological relevancy to our own context.

         

Yet, as we read and interpret the text of scripture to this end, we must also recognize our own presuppositions.  Each of us reads from our own ideologies that are often culturally transmitted to us.  We approach the biblical text with these ideologies, which often leads to our reading our presuppositions into the texts of scripture without realizing it.  Our gender, our race, our sexual orientation, our socio-economic class, and even the various events we have experienced and continue to experience all contribute to the assumptions we have about what the Bible says and means.  Moreover, we often do not recognize such ideologies and presuppositions, and not doing so can cause us to cling consciously or unconsciously to misunderstandings and misinterpretations of biblical passages that are not true to the text or a critical approach to its interpretation. 

         

Indeed, such misinterpretations may be so deeply embedded in our cultural locations that they may be hard to set aside altogether.  They are often like a pair of old spectacles that have become a part of who we are and through which we see everything.  To be sure, we would be uncomfortable and untrusting of what we read without them.  But, if we are to read the texts faithfully in order to shape a more relevant and meaningful theology and practice, we must take them off, at least for the purpose of seeing the text differently.

         

Of course, we could read the Bible critically in isolation, but that may only lead us back to our presuppositions.  A more fruitful practice of reading would be to read the text of scripture in a community that may offer challenges to our individual understandings.  A text of scripture does not have a single meaning limited to authorial intent, and no one person has greater authority in interpreting a text of scripture.  Certainly we can be helped by those trained to read these ancient texts; those committed to the study of their original languages, settings, and purpose, but we need not all be biblical scholars to read, appreciate, and live out the meanings of the biblical texts. 

         

Each of us approaches the texts with different experiences and thus each of us has different presuppositions.  When shared in a community of textual readers, however, such experiences can enrich one’s faith and lead one to be more faithful in his or her discipleship.  The richness of the biblical texts cannot be limited to authorial intent or authoritative interpretation.  Rather, the Bible contains a multiplicity of valid interpretations, and reading in community can help us see other meanings and other ways of assessing the Bible.

         

Yet, while we can read the scriptures in the communities we call our churches, this may only reinforce the same presuppositions.  Others from our community wear similar glasses, for we typically associate with those who look like us, talk like us, and are from the same social and economic situations.  There is nothing inherently wrong with this practice, and reading in likeminded community is an exercise in biblical and theological interpretation that can shape our discipleship.  But, reading the text with people from other races, other cultures, other social and economic conditions, and other ways of thinking about God and humanity can help us recognize our presuppositions and assist us in seeing the text vastly different.  And such a practice may help us to see God differently by offering the Spirit a way of leading us to fresh interpretations that shape our theological thinking.

Repenting Toward God: An Advent Reflection

In following the Gospel of Mark’s opening, what I have called Mark’s Advent story, I have suggested that the story calls us to wait on God and listen for God; two disciplines we ought to practice during the Season of Advent.

But after a time of waiting, however long it might be, and after listening for God through the multiple and diverse ways God may speak, we are confronted with the choice of either ignoring or acting. If we ignore the messenger and message of God, then we cannot fully embrace the gospel of God. To enter God’s rule means that we must act in response to both the messenger and message of God. Such actions are defined by two simple, but interrelated terms: repent and believe.

Much like the term sin, the idea of repentance is often pushed aside as unnecessary. Because we are told we should never admit that we have failed, often intentionally and horribly, there seems to be no need to admit our sin, and thus we believe that there is no need for the successive action of repenting from our sin. But this way of thinking is foreign to the gospel’s message.

Indeed, at the very heart of the gospel is the idea, the command, and the action of repenting. In fact, a careful reading of Mark’s prologue shows that the call to repent is there from the beginning. the words, “Prepare the Way of the Lord,” spoken through the prophet, is a declaration from Isaiah 40 that God will come to God’s people and the people must respond by preparing their lives for the visitation of God.

Such preparation involves recognizing that we are finite humans who are in need of the love and grace of God. This recognition is indicated through the act of turning from our self-serving lives and turning to God and to others in service and love.

Mark follows this declaration with the introduction of God’s messenger, John, who preaches a baptism of repentance and to whom throngs of people come to confess their sins and be baptized in preparation for God’s coming.

But John is only the forerunner to the one who comes in the authority of God; the one who is proclaimed as the Beloved Son by God. In the coming of Jesus, we see again that at the core of the gospel is the idea of repentance. Jesus declares, “The rule of God is near. Repent and believe in the good news.”

Thus, at the heart of Israel’s ancient prophet’s preaching, the proclamation by the one sent as the messenger of God, and Jesus’ announcement that God’s rule was near is a call to repent.

But two important questions come to mind regarding the idea of repentance. What does it mean to repent and from what should we repent?

We can find assistance in answering these questions by looking at the Greek word behind this English rendering to garner a definition of the word repent. Simply put, the word means to turn around or to change one’s mind. But this dictionary meaning does not help us much.

We often think of repenting as telling God that we are sorry we committed this or that sinful act and we will never do it again. Yet, what we find is that we do those things again and again no matter how serious we are in our repentance. But is repentance simply a turning away from our private and favorite sins?

While we should continue to repent of those individual habits that afflict us, the idea and practice of repentance is much bigger.

Repentance is when we allow our lives to be bent continually away from our self-interests and toward the will and purposes of God, particularly as they relate to our intentions and actions towards others. It is not a magical formula we use to get in right relationship with God; it is a yielding of our lives to the will and purposes of God and God’s just rule on earth.

And this helps us answer the question concerning from what should we repent.

We are to repent from our sinful lives of selfish living in which we have failed to love our neighbors and our enemies, failed to practice justice and mercy, and failed to side with the weak and vulnerable.

We are to repent from our neglect to protect the most defenseless of our society, whether a child in poverty, a homeless adult who hungers, a person facing loneliness and depression, or a school full of innocent children who are gunned down.

We are to repent from allowing our politics to become divisive, from allowing our culture to have a love affair with violence, from allowing an ever intensifying disregard for human life, and from allowing bigotry, racism, religious intolerance, sexism, and homophobia to continue to exist.

But more than repenting from these evils and many more, we are also to repent and turn toward the rule of God. In doing so, we embrace a new life of love, justice, compassion, and mercy toward everyone. This is the heart of the gospel and the hope of Advent and Christmas.

For Christians, the Season of Advent is a time when we are once again reminded of the coming of God in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In our celebration of this coming, we relive the story of God’s visitation with God’s people by preparing the way of the Lord in our own lives by repenting of our self-serving actions that neglect the needs of others, that degrade the humanity of others, and that wound the heart of God, and by turning toward the rule of God.