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The First Sunday of Advent Luke 21:25-31 |
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The year is 1194; the place, a turkish prison during the time of the Third Crusade. A number of ragged men, with long hair and beards, are confined to a filthy dungeon awaiting punishment for having stolen a few pieces of bread. A man who will later be identified as Robin of Locksley seizes an opportunity and is able to escape, taking two others with him. One is a fellow Englishman, who has been his life-long best friend, and the other is a stranger, a Moor, who has been imprisoned on sentence of death. His best friend is killed, but the other man helps Robin return to England and aids him in many adventures. At one point in the movie, Azeem the Moor has been offering his prayers to Allah, the God of Islam. & Robin, who by now is indebted to Azeem many times over for saving his life, says to him, "Now I know it was wrong for us to go to your country and try to impose our faith on you." It's a highly enlightened position for 12th century England, and probably more a reflection of the religious views of the screenwriters than of the actual characters. But, it is a view that perhaps many of the crusaders arrived at, after finding out for themselves that just the fact that they were Christian didn't mean they could--or should--gain control over the entire world. This exchange in the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, reminded me of an editorial comment made some time ago in The Christian Century Magazine. I don't remember the writer's name, but the subject on which he was writing was pornography. And in that editorial, he made a statement that went something like this: "Christians have a responsibility to speak out and act in response to their convictions and in opposition to views they believe to be false. But since we live in a pluralistic society, Christians must neither demand--nor even expect--that their own view must prevail (even among other Christians) but rather insist only that it be heard and taken seriously." In other words, our call is to be faithful, not triumphalist. The popes and monarchs who launched the Crusades were certainly more intended toward triumphalism than tolerance. But such triumphalism isn't limited to the Middle Ages or even to the great age of missionary expansion. We've seen it among the Christian parties in Bosnia, among the Islamic factions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In our own country, a battle is raging among Conservative and Liberal Christians over who will control the church and who knows best the will of God. I find myself wondering; if we are really called to be "heard and taken seriously," then should the apocalyptic vision of the end of the age in today's gospel lesson be modified in light of our pluralistic needs? I don't think so. For whenever God comes, whether 2000 years ago in Palestine, or again in this Advent/Christmas season, or at the end of the age, God comes to judge, over all things (however harshly or gracefully). "Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near," is one more clear indication that Advent is a time for liberation, and liberation is made possible when the chains of all that enslaves us are broken. As the words of our opening procession proclaim: Just as Christ's first Advent brought judgment upon all that was wise, all that was mighty, and all that was powerful, so his Advent today, in this season, brings judgment on all that is pretentious and self-serving and idolatrous. And so, surely, his final Advent will bring judgment upon every expression of injustice, every inclination toward self-justification of sin, --all unrighteousness and all self-righteousness, on both a personal and systematic level. The Christian faith is not just a matter of, "what shall I gain?" but also, "What shall I give up or be freed from?" We need to seek out such an Advent and not fear it, --to lift up our heads and not hide them. For Advent's power to set free, is the power to set us free. It's light has the strength to remove the shadows and uncertainties of our own convictions, it's truth beyond any measure of doubt. For now, our world, like the world of 800 years ago, as depicted in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, is often ambiguous and ambivalent. & I would be the first to confess that my response to that ambiguity is often the same as Robin of Lockley's in the movie: my longing to have the world be different, runs hard up against the world as it is. I, too, wish to be faithful and not triumphalistic, democratic and not authoritarian, pluralistic and not myopic, inclusive and not exclusive. Yet, in spite of my own short comings and failure to achieve these things, today's gospel leads me to believe that in Advent there is more than just the confirmation of what is; there is judgment on what was, and new hope in what is yet to come. And the sure knowledge that God is still in control-- to judge, to love, to enlighten, to forgive, to set free. The petitions of our Advent hymn are our prayer as well: The King shall come when morning dawns and light and beauty brings: O come, o come Emmanuel, Come Lord Jesus,
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