Advent is the time when we are given the time to think about the event we will celebrate at the end of this time: Christmas. If you are like me, sometimes we spend so much time doing everything we think we need to do to celebrate Christmas that we spend little or no time thinking about the meaning of the Christmas event. And then when Christmas arrives, it is quickly celebrated and just as quickly forgotten as we move on with life – and getting ready for New Year’s Day.
What we sometimes forget in our forgetting to reflect on the meaning of Christmas during this Advent season is that the real meaning of Christmas is to pervade all of life and not simply the spiritual part. Jesus was born into a very real world that is much like ours, in fact is ours, with the very same problems. The issues Jesus came to address are still with us, much to our condemnation as a people of faith. For had we and those who came before us took Jesus’ message seriously, we would not be dealing with these problems today.
But we are. Unfortunately, they have become even more compounded because we have made them into political issues rather than moral issues: problems like hunger, disease, health care, sexual issues of every kind, to name just a few for starters. These issues are not Red vs. Blue, Right vs. Left, Democrat vs. Republican, or any other category we use to decide how they should be addressed. For in debating how we should address them we almost always forget that we are taking about people and not about politics.
Jesus’ concern was first, last and always about people. It was not about political correctness or even about the Law. If there was a person in need, a person who was hungry or thirsty or who was discriminated against for any reason, that person was of immediate concern for Jesus – and, of course, should be for us. Debating how to address issues is needed just as long as we don’t forget the reason for the debate, the discussion, in the first place: meeting the needs of the people.
Jesus came among us to remind us that our life of faith is to be about a life of service one to another. No one is to be exempt from our ministry. No one. Jack Harberer, editor of Presbyterian Outlook, writes this: “Wisdom should at least teach us two things. First, in order to bear Christ’s purposes to the world, we need to advocate policies with both eyes open. While our left eye focuses on woman’s equality, the right eye needs to focus on minimizing abortions. While our left eye focuses on economic injustice, the right eye needs to focus on free enterprise. As the left eye would defend the rights of sexual minorities, the right eye needs to warn against sexual promiscuity. As the left eye attends to welcoming strangers and defending the rights of imprisoned enemy combatants, the right eye needs to sustain the rule of law and to protect against terrorism.”
Advent is the season for seeing with both eyes, for seeing as Jesus saw, for reasoning as Jesus reasoned, for refusing to allow politics or anything else to deter us from being about what Jesus was about: seeking and serving all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, loving everyone as Jesus loved. That’s not the easy way. It’s the only way.
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