The Second Sunday of Advent: The new becomes old and the old becomes new

I was admonished in a friendly, though motherly (mainly because of the one doing the admonishing) sort of way to keep up better with my blog, because there are a lot of people who depend on this forum to keep up with my life and experiences in the Philippines. So I am starting to follow those instructions with my Sundays of the Christian year devotionals/reflections.

Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

I said to my mother yesterday morning that the subtitle of the blog is, after all, "experiences and reflections teaching Old Testament in the Philippines." The reflections part I get down just fine. And I was very good in the first weeks and months with posting about the experiences, because everything was new and different to me.

But now I have ridden jeepneys more than a hundred times. The experiences that were, back in June and July, new and exciting, are now old hat. The lectionary texts for today, the Second Sunday in Advent, seem to emphasize in different sorts of ways the turning over the old into the new. The American expression most apt is "turning over a new leaf," and though one might rightly wonder why a new leaf being turned over is supposed to mean that one is correcting one's life, that is the expression that we use. Advent is a time of preparation, yes, but it is also a time of renewal. Many of my friends and family in the States are complaining of snow getting in the way and the cold settling in. But others are contemplating the beauty of the snowfall.

And old commercial I suddenly remembered praised snow as "the cold pack pressed over nature's boo-boo," which, although it was meant to sound funny, is actually rather profound. The winter is a time of dormancy and expectation, but also renewal--just like Advent. This is probably why Advent was put in the Christian year in the winter. I know that Christmas is a Christianization of the pagan rites surrounding the winter solstice, okay, but that doesn't make Christmas a holiday that should be avoided. Typically, the "have you thought about this???" emails and blog posts are making their way around the internet this season, and one in particular I noted said that Christmas was not a Christian holiday at all because of its original pagan connotations. I shook my head in surprise at the ignorance of this idea. The same thing happens when otherwise well-meaning Christians and churches substitute "fall festival" for Halloween, a holiday that they think has some kind of odd pagan connotations, sacrificing cats and whatnot. but Halloween is a Christianization of the old pagan celebrations of the autumnal equinox. One of the principal things connected with that was the festival of Samhain (pronounced, so I have read, "SAU-win"), which was a harvest festival, a fall festival. Do you see the problem here?

Well, this meditation went rather far afield of its original intent. Things that I write often do that. Let's see if I can reconnect it. The promises of restoration in Isaiah 40 and Psalm 85 clearly go together. But the Psalm has a very interesting element: verse 8 reads that God "will speak peace to his people, to his godly ones, / but let them not turn back to folly." Salvation is from death, from sin, from pride, from egocentricity, from mistreatment of other people and exploitation of the natural world...and it is from hell, but the point is not to cry out for salvation to God, then simply return to doing all the things from which you needed saving in the first place (Jer 7:10).

I am teaching Historical Books this semester, and the dominant theme of the book of Judges, to which we have not yet come in our discussion, is the people of Israel continually returning to the same folly and error after the death of whatever judge whose exploits had just been described in the book. The ultimate pessimistic conclusion of the book of Judges is that "in those days there was no king in Israel, and all the people did what was right in their own eyes" (Judg 21:25). But the texts for today indicate rather an optimism, a firm confidence that we may indeed "lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely, and run the race that is marked out for us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12:1b-2).

I am also teaching Doctrine of Holiness this semester, and through the lectures so far in that class I have been emphasizing the positive, the optimistic aspects of holiness theology. Too often, the doctrine of holiness has been lost in a maze of rules laid out by well-meaning people in order to distinguish the holy ones from the non-holy ones. I think this is not the way we should go, for it tends in the way of a suffocating legalism. Life should indeed be about optimism, the optimism of grace. Sin can be set aside in this life.

Let me say that again. Sin can be set aside in this life. Sin can be set aside. In this life. Sin. Can. Be. Set. Aside. In. This. Life. We need not pray that we "confess to [God] all the sins we have committed, in thought, word, and deed, against [his] divine majesty." This is far too pessimistic, far too limiting of the human potential to rise above doing merely what is right in our own eyes. God does not wish that anyone would perish, as the reading from 2 Peter maintains, but that all should come to repentance. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as Mark 1 claims for itself. We do not need to live in the situation where "sin is crouching at your door, and its desire will be for you, but you must master it" (Gen 4:7b).

So, far from being a time that should be avoided by Christians because of its pagan connotations, Advent and Christmas represent a cold pack pressed against an old boo-boo, the stain of sin, the broken down and marred image of God in our lives. It is broken down, it is marred...but it is not lost. It can be restored. And it has been restored. Comfort, comfort, my people, says your God. Amen.

O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

Dear Savior haste!
Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show Thy face,
And bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

O Thou whom nations sighed for,
Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
Wilt break the captive fetters,
Redeem the long lost fold.

Dear Savior haste!
Come, come to earth.
Dispel the night and show Thy face,
And bid us hail the dawn of grace.
O come, Divine Messiah,
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.