ADVENT FOR A WORLD TRYING TO MAKE GOD USEFUL
Whether we like it or not, we live in a world where Christmas begins the day after Halloween. This is the rhythm of a modern secular context shaped by marketing quotas. The pressure to rush to the next thing blinds us to the fact that we are being formed as consumers rather than faithful followers of Jesus. Here we are trained to see almost every decision in life through the lens of how things are either useful for us or useless.
If marketing wasn’t enough, we have the world of business. In this context we are regularly reminded that we live in a R.O.I. (Return on Investment) world. We wonder, “How long until we see how things benefit us?” Further, we ask, “How little can we invest to get a large return?” Questions like these make up the dominant lens for how we make decisions, how we measure success and how we approach many areas of life.
Consequently, it should not come as a surprise that we struggle with the Bible’s approach to Jesus’ arrival. At each step we feel a frustration that certain parts do not fit the efficient and useful ways of our world. It is here that we learn that the lead up to Christmas is meant to confront and correct our temptation to fit God into our efficient models.
What would it take for you to slow down and make room to consider what might cause you to miss the deeper meaning of this season?
Aware of these kinds of struggles, Christians have, for many years, called our attention to this period known as Advent. The term ‘advent’ means coming or arrival and when applied to pre-Christmas season it is meant to provide time to focus on how to prepare for Jesus’ arrival.
This four-week period pushes back against a world already in full Christmas mode. In gentle resistance, we slow down to consider how our world distorts our views of God by convincing us that if he is worth worshiping he should prove to be useful.
Instead of feeding our worst human tendencies God begins with whispers among those in a village. Only those who slow down to listen can hear the warning of how foolish it would be to think God is a being we could use for our personal benefit. Over the years, Advent helped me notice this distorted view of God in my own life. Along these two themes stretched me to embrace the season of Advent as a time to make room for surrender and surprise.
I. Prayers of Patient Expectation & Surprise
Prayer is the first thing to go in a world shaped by usefulness. In fact, the most common reason people stop praying is that what they wanted God to do did not happen. For most people, prayer is defined by the world’s vision of ‘useful’.
When things do not change as expected, I decide that prayer does not seem worth it. The rate-of-return approach makes prayer seem useless.
During Advent we are thrust into a world shaped by years of unanswered prayers. Instead of a God who quickly answers our requests, we learn that his desire is to increase our capacity for silence, intimacy and his immeasurable peaceful presence.
The writings of the prophets record a long history of when God’s people had to learn to pray, seek and surrender to a God that often did not respond to their every request. Instead, something else was taking root. In the slow and patient waiting they were being formed as those who had to learn to follow a God who would not fit the useful categories of our world.
For many of us, unanswered prayers reveal our level of commitment. A God that isn’t as useful as we want is to hard too follow and too inconvenient to worship. Hence, we rush ahead and turn Christmas into a season of festivities embracing it as a holiday rather than remembering it is a Holy Day.
Advent can corrects this horrible habit that is fueled by a world addicted to a self-centered vision of usefulness.
The period leading up to Christmas provides time to listen to the prayers recorded in the Bible revealing how to seek God without trying to use God.
Consider that between the end of the Hebrew Bible and the beginning of the New Testament (where we learn about Jesus’ arrival) scholars estimate approximately 400 years of ‘silence’.
One prayer captures the spirit of the age and the ridicule and pressure to make God useful or move on. We read,
“My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:3)
This year, may we let Advent be a time to refocus on these prayers. Only then will a new rhythm take shape in us. One that helps us see that God is doing something that we never expected. That maybe something even more beautiful and more surprising than our suffering might be taking root.
Perhaps, unanswered prayers are a way we learn that God is coming to join us in prayer. This surprising revelation is celebrated every time we refer to Jesus as Emmanuel; God with Us. At Advent we get to prepare ourselves to embrace that a God who is for us is coming to reveal himself as the God who wants to be with us. Do you long for this in your life? Are your prayers a reflection of a heart ready for God’s presence to be among you?
II. Waiting on A baby: Preparing for the Kingdom
Another way that Advent prepares us for Christmas is by drawing us into the messiness of Jesus’ birth as it is found in the Bible. In fact, the key people at the heart of the Christmas story are humbly aware that God is setting up the stage for a new king, with a new Kingdom, unlike the other kingdoms they had experienced.
Ancient kingdoms surfaced by force, but not this one. Here God stifles our human attempts to force our ways for useful by taking on the form of a baby. Jesus, the new King, does not enter our temporal world by some magical forceful power, or by bypassing the human frailties of life. Instead, his virgin mom will feel the increased struggles of the human condition.
God the Holy Spirit does not violate or bypass our humanity. Jesus will still take nine months to be born. He will require numerous hours of feeding and regular sleep to grow up as part of his special redemptive role.
Advent confronts us with an honest moment of confession to admit, “that’s not how we would have done it”. Imagine that the all powerful, all sustaining God assumed human flesh as a child in a world where infants represented that greatest symbol of uselessness.
I have three boys and I often think back to those early years when they would crawl into the most dangerous places, cry for the most insignificant things and often leave us exhausted. As babies, they were not helpful yet they added a beautiful messiness to every part of our lives. We would not have wanted it any other way, yet it took time to see something mysterious about being among children. Perhaps, this is what Jesus meant when he warned that,
“…anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Mark 10:15
As we move toward Christmas this year, may you welcome the wisdom that that Advent has to offer. Take the next few weeks to consider that God is redefining our human temptation to make Him someone we can use, control or wield on our terms. In fact, God’s Christmas surprise is a declaration that He is the living God that cannot be used, but instead demands our worship as those who were created for him and his purposes.
A few years ago I wrote a little book to encourage our church to revisit sharing about Christmas with those who struggle to believe. Those who read the book, recalled how encouraged they were to slow down, read and enter the messy way the Jesus’ arrival is presented to us in the Bible. They were living into Advent and letting the the biblical stories reveal how God pushes against every selfish demand we have to make him fit into our world on our terms.
Advent is the perfect time to correct how our culture so easily misses this truth. Maybe like me, you need to fight off saying “Merry Christmas” too soon. For some, it might mean to resist turning this sacred time into just a festive season for family. Perhaps, look over your plans and consider how you might prioritize times of worship to practice waiting with others who are tired of false promises form by our efficient world. Most of all, may your preparation help you realize, as G.K. Chesterton once noted, “…the things that are truly human are the useless ones.”
