Advent Four…Grim

All the readings are pretty grim today. All focus on the brokenness of humankind. Matthew addresses God's refusal to prove Godself to those who are intent on skepticism. Lots of talk of sinners and fools and cows of Bashan, a rather creative slur for the rich women living and oppressing in the time of the prophet Amos. I'm sure calling them cows didn't win Amos any popularity contests. Want to make a woman angry…the title "cow" will do it.

An article circulated on Facebook yesterday, Seven Lies about Christianity that many Christians believe wholeheartedly. The first two are that you will always be happy and that all your problems will disappear. Not the picture painted by todays Advent texts. We would love it, I suppose, if God just went ahead and brought fully God's kingdom in the here and now…we think we would. But if we step back just the smallest step, I think we begin to recognize ourselves in the litany of brokenness. We are oppressors, sometimes intentional, sometimes not (listen to today's NPR report on making t-shirts in Bangladesh). We are often fools. Psalm 50 describes how we think God wants one thing from us when God wants something entirely different. We want things done on our timeline and with our definition of success (2 Peter reading). Even "after we saw it" we don't commit to this life of discipleship (Mt. 21:32). God looks for the wise in Psalm 53 and finds "there is no one who does good."

Perhaps this is the discipline of Advent. Perhaps we are challenged to live for a time in the darkness, look at it, stop pretending it doesn't exist, identify and embrace our part in it. Our friend in 2 Peter suggests that the Lord is slow because of patience, wanting people to "come" to repentance. Reality is, repentance is not possible if we cannot see or acknowledge our brokenness.

Friends who do counseling or therapeutic intervention talk about the difficulty of the first step…helping someone admit they have a problem. That may be the hardest thing ever for us. We so clearly see the problem in every one else, in every thing else. That is what the sinners and prostitutes in the Matthew reading could do. They fully recognized their shortcomings, their sins…and they fully recognized the saving grace offered to them in Jesus Christ. The people of God were the ones who couldn't see their own faults. They also missed the joy of their salvation.

The weirdness is, we live in the full and sure knowledge that we are beloved and forgiven by God. But for today, perhaps we are encouraged to consider our brokenness so that we might know deeply and fully the joy of our forgiveness, so that we might sing the praises of Psalm 147 with every fiber of our beings.