Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
A Time to Long, Change, Hope, and Phone Home
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
December 2001In the northern hemisphere, the time before Christmas comes as the world is darkening. Advent is about humanity longing for light to come, longing for God to act. It is permission and invitation for each of us to enter the heart's dark places that we usually try to ignore, and to cry out, "Stir up your power, Lord, and come."
Advent reminds us also, with its memory of John the Baptizer, that self-assessment and change need to be done to make room for Christ. For it is not God who keeps the fruits of the earth from reaching those who starve, it is not God who hoards power and wealth, it is not God who abandons spouse and children to scratch a mid-life itch.
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," the unofficial fifth gospel, reminds us that change requires detailed memory and ruthless self-assessment, hard work. Mary and Joseph knew there is no easy road to Bethlehem.
The same ears that hear "make straight a highway for our God" also hear "Comfort, comfort my people, says the Lord." Advent's preparation for Christmas is very much about hope, that in the long run life makes sense. Hope is what separates the believer from the cynic.
Our sense of where history is going in God and that in God our life has meaning are the foundation of hope. When everything around appears to be a shambles, hope is what keeps us going, carrying on until victory comes.
Oscar Levant once said that if you look behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood, you will find... the real tinsel. I rather like a lot of tinsel on my Christmas tree, and will keep it. When I hold it aside, however, I see not more tinsel, but the challenge of Christmas.
Christians believe that God has entered the world and shares our lot. Believing that is the challenge of Christmas.
I say challenge because the horrors of human evil are as real now as they were when Jesus was born. The mystery of disease, pain, and suffering also remains the greatest unsolved philosophical problem. In a world populated then as now with liars, cheaters, bullies, bureaucrats and terrorists -- in a world where then as now the death rate is one each and there is plenty of suffering -- in that world, Christians saw God appearing not as the vengeful warrior for whom some ancient sages had looked, but as vulnerable as one can be: as a baby, gently subverting the strong, the loudmouthed, the manipulators, the arrogant, totally dependent on those around him.
We, too, enter a less guarded, state when we hold and try to communicate with a new and properly waterproofed baby, perhaps hoping it will hang on to a finger. The point of telling infancy stories is to remind us that we are invited to a relationship with the divine built not on force but on love, vulnerability, intimacy, and complete trust.
When, in our Spirit-led imaginations, this child reaches up for us to hold it, we realize that holding the baby takes lots of work. Christians must engage what is amiss in our culture, and do so non-violently. Vulnerability requires courage. The starving and under-educated children of the world need our constant care. Liking babies requires sacrifice.
During these tense times, holding the baby reminds us also that, as this world's resident aliens, we need to phone home.
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