As We Wait
“The glory of Christmas is not that it marks the birth of some great religious leader but that it celebrates the long-anticipated coming of God himself” - David Mathis, The Christmas We Didn’t Expect
As the Advent season begins, as director of communications for CIFC, I really should be writing something profound about how Advent marks a time to stop and reflect in circumspect wonder at the miracle of the glorious birth of the long-awaited savior.
And while such statements are wonderful, if I am to be honest, I’m just really tired right now and circumspect wonder feels far above my energy level. At this point of the semester, being a humanities student at NYU feels less like an education and more like an exercise in understanding human misery at a deep level and being able to cram it into my brain for long enough to pass a test, you know, preferably without breaking down into tears. It seems everything —everything— has a problematic history or is in some way related to injustice. What’s worse, my liberal arts education has hacked my brain, and I can no longer even enjoy a dumb Christmas movie without thinking critically about it as a political text with biases and conclusions. Ugh.
Mostly, I just really, really just want to be able to rest, forget about human misery and the global pandemic and my finals and all of my friends’ problems and anything even vaguely political and the massive clock in Union Square which gives us seven years to drastically decrease our carbon footprint. I want to enjoy something —anything— that is entirely unproblematic. That is to say, I want heaven to come. I want no more death, or mourning, or crying, or suffering, or pain. (Rev. 4.21) Is that too much to ask?
And, after all, that is what Advent is really about. That is, for thousands of years, like me, God’s people were waiting for a savior that would come and get rid of all sorts of problems for them. And they got him, kind of. His name was Jesus, and he was really different from the savior they expected. He wasn’t born in a palace and he didn’t bring out a bunch of armies and weapons and start killing people. What he did do, however, was walk around, heal people, do miracles, teach, and eventually, get murdered.
The way I’m feeling right now, if --heaven forbid-- the fate of the universe was up to me, I would have ended the earth at the moment Jesus died. For murdering the only innocent person ever, I would have given up on humanity-at-large, smitten the living with lightning, resurrected the dead, rolled out the books of judgement and just have up and finished.
Thank God that the fate of the universe is most definitely not up to me. Instead of doom and lightning, humanity got a second chance through the resurrection of Jesus and the creation Church. Personally, I’m a big fan of the resurrection, but I’m not always sold on the Church. On one level, I stan the idea of a loving community whose sole mission is to love other people and fulfill its essential function of discipleship and helping believers grow in their faith (see 1 Cor. 13, Lk. 10.27, and Matt. 28:19-20). However, on another level, I have lived experience of how the Church has behaved in an unloving fashion that has inflicted deep pain on myself and others. What’s worse, I also have historical evidence which points to the fact that the Church itself has often become a problematic institution that has inflicted harm on the world.
However, despite my fraught relationship with the Church, I’m oddly comforted by Paul’s greeting to the church in Corinth;
I [Paul] give thanks to my God always for you [the Church] because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Cor. 1: 4-9 ESV)
Now, it stands to reason Paul knew how deeply problematic the church in Corinth was before he wrote the whole letter. In fact, throughout the rest of the letter, Paul commands a profound understanding of the gamut of issues that plagued the church from division (1 Cor. 1.10) to meat sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 10.14-22) and everything in between. And yet, despite the imperfections and brokenness present in the Corinthian church, Paul still wrote the letter. What’s more, he chose to open it with thanksgiving a reminder that God is faithful, and that He will sustain the believers while they waited for the return of the savior.
And so, my beloved brothers and sisters, as the semester and the year end, and we are faced with far too many issues to resolve this advent season, I firmly believe that the same God who sustained the problematic church in Corinth will also sustain us in New York City and all over the world, even as we wait.