The tale teller tries to
make his listeners acutely aware of what is just
outside the circle of firelight, what lives at the
shadows and edges o
our normal
perception. With the wonder tale, the
teller makes us
aware that another world exists in the place where light
and darkness
meet, and then takes us there.
Phantasmagoria, Jane Mobley
This collection of thoughts and images about the
Season of Advent, that “place where light and darkness meet”, is written
specifically with the tale tellers in mind, those who tell and retell the
saving story which we call Christianity.
The
Rev. Dr. Richard B. Tudor
Advent: God’s
Prelude to Re-Creation
The symbolism of the Season
of Advent is portrayed most meaningfully for us in the progression of the
lighting of the candles on the Advent wreath: one, two three, four candles are
lit and then - the Christ candle.
Darkness is defeated!
In the 19th century,
explorers went into the dark continent, Africa , filled with a kind of
missionary zeal where Western civilization was concerned. In his story, The Heart of Darkness,
Joseph Conrad, writing of the adventurers who had gone out from England
It would be tempting to let the
analogy between Jesus and “a spark from the sacred fire” run away with us but
the comparison is instructive. There is today an abundance of darkness afoot in
our world in the form of war, fear, ignorance, prejudice, hatred, disease, and
hunger. During Advent we are led to see
light in the form of the imperatives of the gospel as a powerful weapon, a
sacred spark to be carried in the world by caring hands.
The opposing images of light and
darkness used so powerfully during Advent speak to every individual who has
ever given some thought to the struggle between good and evil in our
world. Darkness is also an apt
description of the plight of the person who, confused by the demands and
contradictions of life, is unsure of the right way to choose.
The opening canto of Dante’s Divine
Comedy puts the human problem in these terms:
Midway this way of life
we’re bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
where the right road was wholly lost and
gone.
Like Dante who needed guides (Virgil
& Beatrice) to lead him through the labyrinthine confines of the Inferno,
Purgatory, and Paradise , we and those to whom we struggle to teach the Word, need leadership
and direction. The liturgical year of
which Advent is the beginning, is a pathway for us to follow and Jesus is the
guide.
Thomas said to him, “Lord .
. . how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I
am the way and the truth and the life;
no one comes to the Father , but by me.”
John
14:5,6
The subject of the Divine Comedy
is human life and action on earth and eventual destiny in the hereafter. It is a story of the struggle with good and
evil, with life and death, and with time and eternity. Which of us in not involved in the same struggle?
************************
If the liturgical cycle of days,
weeks, and seasons through which we annually work our way were to be imagined
as a yearlong symphony of re-creation, the Season of Advent would be the
overture. This season in length about
four weeks introduces us through an emphasis of prophetic readings and symbols
to what is coming. In it we are given
quick glimpses of the promised birth of the Messiah. Advent is the prelude which contains all of
the major themes of Christianity.
For behold, I create new
heavens and a new earth.
Isaiah
65:17
This
symbolism of undoing Adam’s error which threw the whole creation out of kilter
and estranged humanity from God, is another powerful expression of the meaning
of the Season of Advent. Paradise will
be restored.
All life is in transition! As Christians, we believe that this is a
process of redemption, a movement toward salvation. The point of the lections in the Season of
Advent is that everything is in a process of transition from fallenness to
re-creation and that God is in control of the movement. This is the story which is told during
Advent.
The problem of the human condition has its roots in
the opposition of finitude and infinity. Human beings rail against the
temporary condition of their lives. They
perceive this as a movement toward death (end) which they are powerless to
stop. They are willing to listen to any
alternative. The serpent’s suggestion to
Eve echoes in every age and finds an attentive listener in each one of us. “You will not die. God knows that when you eat of it [the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil], your eyes will be opened and you will be
like God knowing good and evil.”
Only in Jesus are we able to break out of the grip
of this dreadful journey. “I am the
Alpha and the Omega.” In Jesus the
finitude of human beings is subsumed into infinity. The opposition is destroyed.
It is the anticipation of the accomplishment of this
which evokes numerous mentions of joy and rejoicing in the Advent readings:
Sing aloud, O Daughter of
Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all
your heart, O daughter
of Jerusalem
against you, he has cast out
your enemies. The King of
Israel is in your midst; you
shall fear evil no more.
Zephaniah
3:14,15
3rd
Advent
Why? Because God is going to visit and redeem his
people! Saving history moves on. The story unfolds. Transition and change are unstoppable, but
they are a part of God’s plan. The
movement is toward the restoration of the Kingdom (Paradise).
When the Lord restored
the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.
Psalm
126:1
We need to see our lives as prelude
also, moving introductions to greater moments, greater and deeper
understandings which lie ahead. It is an
understatement to say that people have difficulty with transition. Like Adam, they rail against it fearfully
because they sense where it is taking them.
They fail to see that all life is transition.
Living with
Uncertainty
Thus it must be, because one served
a God whose nature was not repose
or abiding comfort, but a God of
designs for the future, in whose will,
inscrutable, great far reaching
things were in the process of becoming, . . .
Joseph
and His Brothers
Thomas
Mann
There is no security in fixed states
of being. It takes courage to commit
oneself to this transition. The
arresting aspect of the nature of the prelude is, of course, the uncertainty of
what is to follow, even though there are hints of it in the prelude. Like John the Baptist who obediently sets
events and expectations in motion and then is violently removed when his part
is played, we in life are often called to play the same sort of
self-sacrificing roles. Transition
occurs, the flow goes on, change happens painfully and often we are unhappy
with what has come into being. This must
have been in the mind of the English poet William Butler Yeats when he wrote
the line: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward
Bethlehem to be born?
Secular
Applications
Looking at our modern world, there
is more which needs to be said about the major Advent theme of re-creation and
the human struggle to do it ourselves.
In our world - American society - the scheme of things is decidedly
materialistic. This is a “made” world
fashioned for us by manufacturers and offered for sale by advertisers, a
“ready-made” world created for us, the consumers. And we wallow in it! Happiness is having the means to buy your
dreams.
The existential writer
Walker Percy talks about people living in spheres of nothingness, vacuums. They are desperate to be thought of as
someone, so they buy things of value hoping that the value will rub off on
them. However, once pulled into the
vacuum, the purchased thing soon loses its value and becomes - nothing. So the person goes out to buy something else
of value of which s/he can be known as the owner. And so on and so on until life becomes an
endless succession of pulling things into one’s personal vacuum.
Obviously the conclusion is that
salvation or re-creation is not found in things. It is found in the fullness of new life in
Jesus. People want to be the judge of what is good and what is evil and thereby
control creation (like God), but that is the wrong path. Remember Dante lost in his dark wood,
ignorant of the right road to take.
We must be careful of which goal we choose. Our goal should be a sense of security,
meaning, and purpose. Those who find it
are re-created! This is the new humanity which has been born in Christ and we
rejoice in it.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation;
the old has passed away, behold, the new has
come.”
2
Corinthians 5”17
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