While we are still in the silence of Advent, the world is crashing in with its manufactured Christmas “joy.” We attended a Christmas “play” last night that was a disgraceful butchering of a classic Christmas story. Peppered with slapstick, improvisation, lights, and non-alcoholic punch, it left me with a headache rather than a taste of Christmas peace.
Our human race is desperately trying to get out of its spiritual imprisonment on its own. Using imagination, crashing sounds, light shows, and “drugs of choice,” we try to create an “out-of mind, out-of-body” experience to get our minds off our own inner unhappiness.
This has been the story of the human race well before the power of electronic entertainment, as it used religious rites to leave the tedium of earth and make connection with something outside itself. Frenzied dancing and wailing, slashing their skins, temple prostitution, and intoxicating drugs were attempts to make contact with their so-called “gods.”
Contrast this with the God of Israel, who came to meet his people in gentle love and outlined for them sacred ceremonies that would help them experience his presence in a deeper way. Sadly, Israel became bored with their God and transferred their attention to “idols” of their pagan neighbors. In the end, their holy city was destroyed and they were driven into captivity.
The prophet Zephaniah spoke of the day when their exile would end and they would return to Jerusalem (Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13).
“For then will I remove from your midst the proud braggarts, and you shall no longer exalt yourself on my holy mountain. But I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord; the remnant of Israel.”
God would remove the “braggarts” who had misled his people, leaving a humble, lowly, and faithful remnant.
“They shall do no wrong and speak no lies…They shall pasture and couch their flocks with one to disturb them.”
The vine of Israel was severely pruned, and yet from this remnant came the Messiah, the Savior of the world.
The Psalmist responds (Ps 34 :2-23):
“…the lowly will hear me and be glad. Look to him that you may be radiant with joy, and your faces may not blush with shame.”
The source of all light, the face of God, would shine upon them and new light would arise from within them—the light of Christ. No need for cheap religious frenzies and thrills once they were able to gaze again with joy on the authentic light.
When the face of God, at last appeared among them in the person of Jesus Christ, the “perfect image of the invisible God,” the majority chose to turn their backs on him. Jesus, in his characteristic way describe this dual response in the story of the two sons (Matthew 21:28-32). One son refused to go out and work for his father yet changed his mind. The other son, representing the establishment of Israel, gave a superficial “yes” and then didn’t show up for work.
Applying the parable and addressing the chief priests and elders, Jesus said:
“When John came…you did not believe him; but the tax collectors and prostitutes did.”
It was the lowly ones, the poor, the public sinners, not the “righteous” group who changed their minds and accepted Jesus into their hearts.
As the world tries to dull our senses to the spiritual reality that is taking place, we can aspire to be “radiant with joy”—it is our choice. Let’s return to Advent silence. Come, Lord Jesus!
