The First Sunday in Advent
The 28th of November marks the First Sunday in Advent for the Christian Calendar. Technically, it's the "New Year." The Church liturgical year starts off with Advent. What is Advent? It is the four Sundays preceding Christmas that marks the anticipation of the coming of Christ.
Advent is a big thing for me. I was probably influenced very much by my time in Germany. There we even had a distinction between Advent hymns and Christmas carols. One did not wish someone else a "Frohe Weihnachten" (Merry Christmas) until it was actually Christmas. So normally until after the Fourth Sunday in Advent did Germans start wishing each other a merry Christmas.
So, I felt it only appropriate to continue a series on Advent from my own point of view. You could call it "progressive." In fact, that's what I am doing: My very own Progressive Advent Series.
In a very liturgical sense, however, I will be referencing the lectionary for my scripture passages. Those of you who are familiar with the Revised Common Lectionary will note that I am not using that particular one. I will be using the German Protestant lectionary, which, in my humble opinion, is a bit more in-depth, seeing how it runs on a 6-year cycle, compared to the 3-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary.
The preaching text for this Sunday is from Jeremiah 23:5-8 (CEB)
The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will raise up a righteous descendant from David's line, and he will rule as a wise king. He will do what is just and right in the land. During his lifetime, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And his name will be The LORD is Our Righteousness.
So the time is coming, declares the LORD, when no one will say, "As the LORD lives who brought up the Israelites from the land of Egypt." Instead, they will say, "As the LORD lives who brought up the descendants of the people of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where he has banished them so that they can live in their own land."
The Low Down
At first glance for the Christian reader, they might jump up and say, "This is about Jesus!"
Well, no it's not.
Jeremiah was writing at a time of great upheaval. There had been a civil war a couple of hundred years prior, which divided Israel into 2 kingdoms: the Northern Kingdom, also called Israel. This was the more powerful kingdom with its capitol in Samaria. Then there was the Southern Kingdom, called Judah, with its capitol in Jerusalem, which was significantly weaker than the Northern Kingdom. The Assyrian Empire conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Judah barely escaped their wrath. The Northern Kingdom was deported and settled in other countries and new people were moved into the land.
Judah tried its best to lay low and appease the Assyrians, but finally the Assyrians themselves were conquered by the Babylonians, who, in turn, decided to conquer this small nation of Judah. Judah was no match at all for the Babylonians.
This is where Jeremiah comes in. He promises hope for both Judah and Israel. He prophesies that this salvation will be so great that it will rival the time when the Israelites were delivered from Egypt. A righteous king will be established here from the line of David, who name means "Yahweh (or the LORD) is our Righteousness."
What's actually interesting here is that this seems to refer to the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, whose name means "Yahweh is righteous."
A Failed Prophecy
It would appear at first glance that this prophecy is a failed one. Zedekiah rebelled against Babylon and the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, killed Zedekiah's sons and blinded him as well (2 Kings 25).
However, Biblical prophecy is not fortune telling. Most prophecy in the Bible is not future prediction and it is certainly not prediction for events that are to happen hundreds or thousands of years later. When the prophets wrote, it was to call the people back to God and to tell them what would happen if they did, but also what would happen if they didn't. Prophecy was a call to justice and holiness: to reject evil and to live a life of love.
Zedekiah was a stupid king who thought he could rebel against a mighty empire. He paid the price for it by seeing his sons executed and then blinded. He never had any more children and was the last king, descended from David, who reigned in Judah.
People can use scripture passages like this and say, "the Bible isn't true!" And, honestly, they'd have a legitimate argument for that. Scripture passages like these are the ones that can depress me and disappoint me.
And then I remember a truth:
Scripture is neither inerrant nor infallible.
And that’s ok. I remember that I had just read this Scripture passage from my old perspective. My critical self analyzed it. I brought up all of the historical context for it. I saw it for how other Christians might see it. Try as we might, the Bible is full of errors, contradictions, and mistakes.
That scripture imploded in front of my eyes. It fell apart and I couldn't and wouldn't put the pieces back together again.
This represented my whole deconstruction from Evangelicalism: I examined my beliefs. I found where they were wrong and fallible. I went through a crisis. I couldn't put the broken pieces back together again.
But what to do? What do you do when your foundation has crumbled?
I grew up believing that "the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were given by inspiration of God and that they only constitute the divine rule fo Christian faith and practice." Scripture just took a tumble for me. Its legitimacy took a major hit in my eyes.
I do not, nor have I ever believed in Sola Scriptura: That only Scripture should be the guidepost for my beliefs. When I did that, I had elevated Scripture to the level of God. I made Scripture the Word of God when Christ is really the Word of God for me.
Maybe that's what the first Christians did . . .
They saw this passage in Jeremiah. Everyone knew that it was written about Zedekiah and how he was supposed to save Judah from the Babylonians, but it failed. His sons were murdered and his line ended, but he had a nephew whose line did not end. If we are to believe the pedigree that Matthew and Luke have given us (which are both substantially different from each other), they at least point us to the claim that Jesus is also descended from David.
Where Zedekiah failed, Jesus succeeded. The teachings of Jesus bring peace. Where Zedekiah failed to live up to his potential, Jesus did something completely different. He lived a fulfilled life and showed us how to live. He brought us the way of peace, even when the world brought death and destruction.
My world had fallen apart.
I had been rejected. Divorced. Lost my faith community. Everything that I thought I knew had crumbled. It wasn't, however, God who had failed me. It was my own fallibility. It was the fallibility of my faith community and the rejection they had show men for being bisexual. It was the fallibility of Scripture, which had not been written by God, but normal, everyday humans who were just like me.
What is the basis of my faith then? I try to base it on God and love. Scripture is secondary. Where Scripture contradicts love, I reexamine it to see what I could learn from it. Then suddenly God is beyond Scripture. God can be found in nature, in the cosmos. God is found in Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and, (dare I say it?) in Satanism and atheism.
God is found in the beauty of the sunrise, in the tragedy of death. God is found despite broken promises and unfulfilled prophecy. God is found despite rejection and hate.
I have discovered more about God than what I had previously known. Now I realize just how little I know about God. I look forward to exploring that and finding out what God actually is and what my relationship to God could be.
For this Advent, despite all of the broken promises, rejections, and hardships, I hope that both you and I can look beyond this to the hope and faith in a God who is better than an unfilled prophecy.
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