The New Testament is filled with stories and images of people who are told that something is going to happen, that it really is going to happen, that it could happen any time, that even God’s own Son does not know when the end, the grand finale, will come, and that, therefore, the basic stance of the Christian and the church is always necessarily one of expectancy and hope.
For people like us who have far more than we could have ever asked for, or even dreamed in many cases, it’s hard to look forward with expectancy and hope. What is there to look forward to except the LOSS of all that we are and have — the inevitable decline and decay, followed by death, at which time all of us leave everything behind which we thought in this life to be so terribly important, to go to some unknown destination, or, if one is utterly without faith, to oblivion and extinction?
Today the world is too much with us. Our lives are centered in having and holding and holding on. This is not what God intended. God intended that humans acknowledge the Source of their all, and to stand in awe of this gracious saving presence, and to respond with a lifelong commitment of one’s whole life and livelihood to the Lord and all God’s people.
But that’s not the way it works for most of us. We are busy; we are preoccupied with the daily flow; we are occasionally attentive to what God might be saying to us, but functionally we live our lives as if God were nowhere in sight.
The challenge for Christians is to maintain proper orientation at all times — toward God, neighbor and self, in that order. The usual order, of course, is reversed, and the self garners most of our energy and attention.
As we contemplate the way things ought to be in terms of the order of allegiance and obedience — God, self, others — this season of Advent leading to Christmas and the celebration of the birth of our Lord, offers opportunity to stop, listen, discern and recommit our lives to the One who truly matters, and who desires (and enables) total commitment and devotion to the service of God and neighbor.
In the Christmas season, there is a certain spirit of generosity which, unfortunately, has been commercialized to such an extent that it can hardly be taken seriously. But here and there are moments of true presence — one to another; presents given and received; the awesome apprehension of the divine presence which sustains and transforms life in every place and in every time.
The birth of a child is the symbol of that Presence — a presence which cannot be avoided, a presence to which we must respond, a presence which is accepted or rejected — with temporal and eternal consequences.
The purpose of the church of Jesus Christ throughout the world — past, present, future — is to bear witness to this presence, to proclaim it from the housetops in every city, lest a single child of God not be informed of God’s presence and coming, and with them the gift of life itself.
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