Advent is on the way

Gardening is one of the joys of my life but I have never had success growing one of my favourite plants – the hydrangea.  Recently, a friend gave me two of these plants in pots.  One looked rather sick, in fact, as my friend warned me, it looked close to death.  Anyway, I clipped the dead wood and put the plants near my pond so they would be in a gentler microclimate.

Now, after a week of care, the more robust plant is in bloom and the sick one has shoots.  Each morning on waking, I would go to the plants with a sense of curious expectation.  What will they be doing?  They are flourishing.  The sick one has shoots that seem to be growing minute by minute.  It is fast becoming robust.  My curious expectation has become joyous expectation as I look to see what will happen next.

So much of our Advent and Christmas symbolism, whether popular or liturgical, is northern hemisphere.  How do we see Advent here where December is light, heat and the growing season?

Advent looks to the coming of Jesus who is light, hope and promise.  We celebrate his first coming in human flesh.  We also celebrate in hope and promise, his second coming at the fulfilment of time – the Eschaton - the fulfilment of all creation in Christ that is yet to come.  However, in Jesus’ Resurrection that fulfilment is already present and active - sometimes visible, sometimes very hidden.

My daily encounter with the hydrangea reminds me to look for these signs of life wherever human dignity is affirmed, wherever tenderness for all creation is visible, wherever those who are broken and ignored are welcomed and given voice, wherever love triumphs over greed and despair – no matter how small.  So, joy and hope displace despair.

I want to recognise these small green shoots of life in my own daily life as well as on the global stage.  In recognising, to deepen gratitude; to change mind, heart and action and so become the green shoots of the Risen life greening the world.  St. Peter calls it the ‘spread of the resurrection’ (1 Peter 3:11f). 

So often though I think my attempts are small and of little significance.  However, that is to think in the ways of dominant power.  The power of the Holy One of Israel is revealed in the Jesus, an insignificant birth in the huge Roman empire; an itinerant Rabbi in a small slither of that empire who talked about mustard seeds and lost coins; who healed one-to-one-to-one and who died in fidelity.  In Rising, he turned our expectations inside out.  This is the paradigm for our greening no matter how small or large are our canvas of encounter.  This is the power of reverence and mercy.

The readings of the last weekdays of the year speak of the final coming of Jesus in glory and power.  That final coming is here and it is not in armies or display.  We must read these passages in the light of Jesus’ acts in the Gospel.  Jesus has come in every act of reverence, forgiveness, tenderness and justice that we carry out.

So, let us pray for and support each other and pray for and support those who act in the major global events in order to bring hope and dignity to those who suffer and give voice to those who have no voice.  May they have the courage to continue in the face of what often appears to be events beyond comprehension. 

So the promise of Advent will be fulfilled.  

Our Advent of summer with its fruitfulness becomes a symbol of Grace already given and the fertile power of God’s mercy to all.  Advent invites us to take part in this growing life of the Resurrection and so Christ’s final coming in glory will be visible in mercy, forgiveness, justice and dignity – wherever life is affirmed.

Meanwhile, back to the pond: as an added bonus, (and lest I forget the meaning) the marsh frogs are calling and about to lay their tiny eggs in the pond to accompany the flourishing hydrangeas.  Life is flourishing with the warmth of summer and some rain.

Jesus had no death wish - Easter 2017

During the Scripture readings in the liturgy in the immediate preparation for Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, you have a sense of the drama of Jesus’ final days unfolding.  What has struck me about them is that Jesus had no death wish.  Often in the Johannine texts, as in the Synoptic gospels, Jesus moves on after a confrontation with the ruling authorities.  He simply goes to another place and carries on his ministry.

In one account, the bystanders gather stones to stone him to death for blasphemy.  In another, Jesus’ raising of Lazarus evokes either faith or wary hostility in the Jews. In response, the high priest sees Jesus as a threat to political stability.  Jesus moves on.

However, at some point, avoidance became impossible for Jesus.  There is a line fidelity to God that cannot be crossed where compromise is impossible no matter what the consequences will be.  The gathering hostility towards Jesus gave him a sense of the inevitability of his imminent death.  In that moment, he faced the outcome of his unwavering commitment to the God of Israel.  His life-giving actions, his inclusivity and his teachings threatened religious and political stability.

Stability brings comfort to people but too often comfort comes at the cost of blindness to those who are excluded, who suffer who are ‘not one of us’.  Jesus stands in the line of Israel’s prophets when he exposes this blindness which is to compromise the Covenant of the Holy One with Israel. 

Jesus did not, could not simply throw his life away.  He, who in the words of the Fourth Gospel could say, ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’ and whose every action affirmed human life, could not count his own life as of no value.  However, fidelity to the Giver of that life and to his sisters and brothers in God’s image and likeness could not be compromised because this would be to deny what the gift of life was about.

The Fourth Gospel depicts Jesus in his last days and hours as majestic and calm – he is God enfleshed who is in control of events.  The Synoptic Gospels show Jesus at different moments in his life being confronted by events that shape him and how he understands him ministry.  We see Jesus taking the human journey of experience and insight that leads to new understanding.  

In the Synoptic passion narratives, we see him painfully and humanly coming to terms with his death.  His struggles in Gethsemane to accept the outcome of his ministry bring him, once again to surrender in fidelity to the Holy One of Israel and his mission.

In the darkness of this surrender, Jesus held on to the history of his people Israel, a history that spoke so clearly of God’s saving power in weakness and failure and adversity.  He knew, in the deepest fibre of his humanity, the promises of God.  Somewhere in apparent failure and death God would bring new life as had happened so often in this sacred history.

To think of Jesus going to death knowing the outcome is to trivialise his humanness and God’s way of working.  In human life we don’t know what a new thing will be until it happens.  We can only see intimations and it is on to these hints that we place our hope, trust and fidelity to the Holy One who gives life because God IS life.  

The text of the psalm quoted by Jesus on the cross begins with the very human experience of dark fidelity, “My God, My God why have you abandoned me”, it laments with great vigour, continues with a reflection on God’s mercy and ends in the great proclamation of God’s fidelity and salvation (Ps. 22).  Rabbi Jesus knew his Scriptures. 

This was at the heart of Jesus’ life.