ADVENT

Beginnings

The Liturgical season of Advent was firmly established by the sixth century; patterned on the Lenten scheme, it was a later development because the Christmas feast itself was later and less important than Easter. At an earlier date, the Feast of the Epiphany was more important than Christmas, as it still is in the Greek Orthodox Church. It seems probable that there was a period of penitential preparation for Catechumens awaiting Baptism on the day Jesus’ baptism by John was commemorated: thus this element is still found in the readings for Advent II, centered on John the Baptizer.

Emergence of the Four Sunday Season

In the sixth century, what became Advent was often called St. Martin’s Lent, beginning on November 11th, the feast of St. Martin, and lasting to the eve of Christmas, but by the eighth century, the familiar four Sundays seem to have become the norm, with festive elements appropriate for a preparation for the joy of Christmas. Even so, the penitential element did not completely disappear, and, indeed, was strengthened by the addition of apocalyptic biblical material linking the Second Coming of the Christ to the birth of the baby in Bethlehem. Massey Shepherd sums this up well in his comments on the season of Advent (The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, O.U.P. 1951, p.90):
The double emphasis, therefore, on both the first and the second advents of Christ gives to the season its unique mixture of devotional color: joy in the redemption that has come to us in the Incarnation, and awe before the Judgment that yet awaits us. Yet to the spiritually discerning believer both of these tremendous and signal events of past and future are experienced as eternally present realities.”

The Second Coming & Theological Issues

It my be my imagination, but I sense in Massey Shepherd’s final sentence a certain, shall we say, hesitancy, and that would not be at all surprising: there seems to be an effort to move to a “realized eschatology”, advocated by C. H. Dodd in his seminal book The Parables of the Kingdom, (1935). The whole issue of the second coming with its overtones of Millenarianism, Dispensationalism and prophecies of Armageddon has made some main stream theologians uneasy at least since the middle of the 19th century. The assumption that “future events” in some way or other actually exist depends on some kind of “salvation history”, or Platonic-like scheme that implies the existence of the whole sweep of history in some eternal (pre-determined?) sphere. This is the kind of overview that is given us in Apocalypses, beginning in the mid first century B.C.E., where past events and rulers are presented in symbols of a one-on-one kind – ‘the abomination of Desolation’ = Antiochus Epiphanes etc., so that if we are clever enough, we can work out who really is the Beast about to cause such havoc! Early Christians could also equate Jesus with an apocalyptic Son of Man figure and look for the inevitable signs of his return in judgment and glory.
That the N.T. has a vibrant apocalyptic component goes without saying, and since Weiss and Schweitzer it has become critical orthodoxy to consider Jesus as working within an apocalyptic frame-work; indeed, it has been fairly common to describe him as an apocalyptic figure, proclaiming an imminent end to this world order; this, of course, has the corollary that Jesus was, like every other predictor of the end of history, mistaken. In the nineteenth century, this was enough to reject out of hand such German critical scholarship. Given the predominant Christology of the time in the Church of England, the suggestion that Jesus could be wrong on so central a point produced outcries of horror and pain from the University cloisters and from the Deaneries set in every Cathedral Close (precinct), and from not a few rural Rectory studies. (See my Anglican Polity & New Knowledge on this Blog site).

Eschatological Prophet

In recent decades, however, quite other and very much more substantial reasons have been produced for revising the apocalyptic view of Jesus. This revision has resulted from careful exegetical endeavors, including, particularly, painstaking analysis of the Parables and the Rule of God sayings in the synoptic tradition by C.H.Dodd,
R. Bultmann, J. Jeremias, Eta Linnemann, Norman Perrin and Dominic Crossan, to name just a few. The message of Jesus is clearly eschatological, and can be shown to be rooted more firmly in the earlier prophetic tradition than in the apocalypticism of the period. Careful analysis by these scholars suggests that much of the apocalyptic scenario was introduced in the very early transmission and possible reshaping of Jesus’ words at the same time as the accounts of the events of his ministry (together with attempts to interpret those events) were being formed.

Rule of God in St. Paul

Central to much discussion has been the origin of the notion of Jesus’ speedy return, a doctrine of the Second Coming. Our earliest witness, St. Paul, clearly expresses a note of immediacy. A locus classicus is I Thess. 4.15ff: “we who are alive will be caught up in the clouds”, but there is a notable absence of vivid apocalyptic detail, and Jesus does not seem even to return to earth since he will be met “in the air”. Frequently noted in this respect is I Cor. 16.22 where Paul ends his letter with the prayer Marana tha (Μαρανα θα). In most translations this is read as “Our Lord come”, but it is quite possible that the Aramaic phrase should be read Maran atha which is, “Our Lord has come”. Paul’s use of the term Rule of God is never in an apocalyptic frame: (see, I Cor.4.20; I Thess. 2.12 – both of these imply the presence of God’s rule in individuals and the community; I Cor. 6.9-10; 15.50; Gal. 5.21). Romans 14.17 suggests, again, that the Christian is living already within the sphere of divine influence that the phrase Kingdom (Rule) of God implies. It also should be pointed out that the overall tenor of Paul’s Christology is subordinationist, that is, he is barely orthodox in the Nicene sense of claiming Jesus' equality with the Father. The long passage which rounds off Paul’s treatment of the resurrection in I Corinthians is strongly eschatological, but hardly apocalyptic. The “reign” mentioned in v. 25 seems to be the continuing eschatological battle between God, and the powers of evil, (elsewhere the ‘principalities’ and ‘rulers of this age’), clearly seen in the ministry of Jesus and being carried on by those who are “in Christ” until the victory is won, and, thinks Paul, that is to be very soon indeed. The end of the process is that “God may be all things in all things” (παντα εν πασιν).

The Rule of God in the Teaching of Jesus

This is a vast subject and only the barest summary can be given. The work of the scholars noted above has been responsible for putting the parables of Jesus in the very center of our understanding of his teaching. There is, of course, much else besides the parables centered on the Rule of God theme, coming from Q and found in the Gospel of Thomas in the form of isolated sayings (though often collected in groups by the Evangelists or their sources): these have been identified as wisdom sayings (‘wisdom is vindicated by her deeds), proverbial sayings (‘let the dead bury their dead’), reversal sayings (‘the first shall be last’), and different scholars suggest varying classifications. It is, however, the parables that provide our most reliable insight into that central focus of Jesus’ teaching: the Rule of God - Basileia tou Theou.

Parables & Allegories

I have found Norman Perrin’s Jesus & the Language of the Kingdom, S.C.M. Press, 1976, a masterly summary of the way in which the understanding of the parables has developed, of immense help in my studies in this field. He gives an overview of the developments of the last century beginning with the work of Johannes Weiss (1892) and the “epoch-making work” of A. Jülicher. From a very early date, the parables have been read as exemplary stories, exhorting to Christian living and the practice of behavior like repentance, generosity, and patience. Another significant feature from their very earliest retelling (and writing down) has been to treat these dramatic extended metaphors as allegories: it was this vital distinction between parable and allegory that was Jülicher’s signal contribution, and all subsequent 20th century exegesis has taken this as a starting point. It is widely accepted today that a clear distinction must be made between the two genres: the parables, in origin, are oral material, whereas an allegory is a written, literary production. It has become clear, too, that the parable does not give us information as does an allegory, but makes a single central point, often about the Kingdom of God; in an allegory, each detail has an equivalent, something like a code that must be broken: the details in one of the longer parables, on the other hand, are there because they are part of the story. The various kinds of ground in the Sower parable do not represent different kinds of human personality; it is just the way an ordinary field is, waiting for the Autumn sowing.

Gospel of Thomas

As a result of much careful work, Jeremias and others have exposed for us both
whole allegories added to a parable, and, perhaps more importantly, allegorical details embedded in the text as we have received it. It is significant that the version of the Parable of the Sower found in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying #9) does not have the allegorical addition that we find in Mark. Perrin comments on the importance of the Thomas evidence as follows: "Most parable commentators [have come] to hold the versions of the parables in Thomas to be independent of the versions in the canonical gospels and hence a valuable addition to our resources for reconstructing the text of a given parable." (JLK p.132).

Literary Genre

There is much more that can be said, but, for now, one final point before returning to the issue of the Second Coming: it concerns the literary significance of the two genres. Perrin shows that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between allegory and parable considered as a "language event". The metaphorical/symbolic language of the allegory is expendable, while that of the parable is inexhaustible. Once one has decoded an allegory, the metaphorical language is spent, but this is not the case of a parable, which can be categorized as an extended metaphor. Perhaps an analogy might be that a check once cashed is finished, that which it stood for has been delivered; an equity loan (of vast proportion) on the other hand can be drawn on again and again, and it can also meet changing needs. This represents Perrin”s technical distinction between a ‘steno’ symbol (one on one) and a ‘tensive’ symbol (open ended).

Rule of God in Parable & Saying

The parables convey Jesus’ central message that the Rule of God is upon us and demands action from us; they are not cryptic puzzles from which we may tease information about God and God’s action in the world. They are, rather, the way in which Jesus ‘pulled’ his hearers, and pulls us into sharing his total commitment to the God who holds everything in being (remember Paul’s “may be all and in all”). One might say that the parables are performative, not informative. They challenge the hearer to life decisions: sell everything and buy this pearl; to readjust deeply ingrained racist attitudes: the Samaritan is my savior; and to accept a new view of God’s grace: the three hour worker is paid for a whole day’s labor.
Although some of the parables look to the future fulfillment of the Kingdom, they all also project the Rule of God as active now, and this is an element in several crucial sayings. We may note particularly Luke 11.20, “If I by the finger of God cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon you”. Clearly Jesus claims that his exorcisms are evidence o God’s present, saving activity. Perrin also sees an interesting connection here between the Kaddish prayer of the Synagogue : “May he establish the Kingdom in your lifetime”, and the prayer Jesus taught, “Your Kingdom come”. Both are strongly eschatological but are not apocalyptic in tone.

The Second Coming & Advent

Did Jesus predict in apocalyptic symbolism his return in Judgment such as is enshrined in some of the liturgical texts of Advent? The evidence of the parables and sayings suggests not, and it is reasonable to suppose that in a milieu dominated by messianic and apocalyptic expectations, it would not be difficult for these ideas to be incorporated into the gospel tradition in the process of its formation. After all, there is no doubt that Jesus’ message looked to a future completing of the Rule of God, and his message could easily be interpreted in contemporary apocalyptic symbolism.
In this respect, Luke 17.20-21, compared with 17.22-23 is highly instructive: “Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, he answered them: “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Lo here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” (entos humõn). At one time it was common to translate this as “within you”, perhaps influenced by an individualistic spirituality, but linguistically it really must be “among you”. Here again we have strong evidence for Jesus’ awareness of God’s rule active now. Perrin (JLK p. 58) points out, however, that the following verses (22 & 23) are an interpretation of this saying in apocalyptic terms. Jesus’ reference to the Kingdom of God is interpreted as a reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds. In an earlier work Perrin wrote: “The first result of the investigation [some 200 pages] is, then, to establish major differences between Jesus and his contemporaries in that, although he spoke of the future, he gave neither specific form to his future expectation (beyond the general one of vindication and implied judgment), nor did he express it in terms of a specific time element.” (Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus, S.C.M. Press 1967, p.204).

So, What to Say in Advent

Such biblical insights do not easily overturn centuries of dogmatic and liturgical tradition, and so we are left to do what we can with the apocalyptic furniture of the earliest interpreters of Jesus' message. It is not common in Anglican preaching to use the results of critical scholarship – how often have you heard a preacher note that a saying of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is a wonderful second-generation insight into some issue? And the result is that what is common knowledge in the lecture halls of many Seminaries is a closed book to many. A corollary of this is that when someone publishes a popular book containing all the scholarly assumptions, there is an outcry: the most spectacular example of this was the publication in 1963 of John Robinson’s Honest to God, which produced the customary Church of England howls of pain, such as, “How could a Bishop write things like this?”

So far as the 1979 Episcopal Prayer Book Lectionary is concerned, it is only the first Sunday that has strongly apocalyptic material, and that might be a good opportunity to do some teaching about the ways in which the early generations of Christians interpreted, edited and in some instances transformed the teaching of Jesus. We might also emphasize the importance of the Epiphany and the clear tendency of Luke to associate the Messiahship of Jesus with his Baptism by John, (and Paul possibly with the Resurrection - Rom. 1.4), giving thanks that Advent includes the baptismal narratives. Of course, that would raise the question of the Nicene Creed, and the ‘orthodoxy’ of Luke and Paul.

Social Responsibility and the Church

Cultural, Biblical and Theological Musings

“A woman came with a….jar of very costly ointment …. and poured the ointment on his head….Some… said in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For [it] could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor”. And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; …. She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me; …… she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial.”” (Mk.14.3-8).

Jesus’ answer to the woman suggests that a concern for those in need is an almost universal category of social involvement; as Nelson Mandela has reminded us often, so many other ills are linked to poverty: disease, lack of education, crime and terrorism to name just a few. Like so many of Jesus’ sayings, ‘the poor are always with you’ can be read (and used) in more than one way. It may be quite pragmatic, that is to say, experience shows that this is a (sad) fact of human history: a more ominous view of the saying might be that poverty is, as it were, built into the order of things, an item of the lex naturalis . Such a view is quite explicit in many economic theories of the last two centuries which suggest a pool of unemployed people is required (as in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 1776) for the economic health of the whole. Either position is problematic for the church: if history shows the ubiquitous presence of poverty, what about those who follow the teachings of Jesus: if it is part of the order of things, what of the church as a new order?

Roman Empire - Hellenism

If it is true that the poor will always be with us, is it, in fact, the case that they always have been? To pose the question at once exposes the relativity of the term. H.D.F. Kitto commenting on life in classical Greece writes, “In Greece one can lead an active life on much less food than harsher climates make necessary”. He points out that much of life was (and still is) lived out of doors not only at work but in leisure; that Athenians had so much of the latter is often attributed to the slaves they owned, but Kitto goes on, “Slavery had something to do with it, but not so much as the fact that three-quarters of the things which we slave for the Greek simply did without”. (Greeks 36).

Slavery was, perhaps, a defining characteristic of the great empires of the Nile and Euphrates deltas, and was firmly established in classical Greece, and later in the Hellenistic world of 300 B.C.E. to c. 300 C.E. It is quite impossible to generalize about so many cultures over a span of six centuries, but some context for the emergence of Judaism and then the Christian movement is essential. It might help to begin towards the end of period with a quotation from Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia, a Roman Province stretching along the southern seaboard of modern Turkey. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (3.27-28). Without an immense effort of historical imagination, it is hardly possible to grasp just how startling, how radical, how quite beyond the pale, sentiments like these must have sounded to the average Hellenistic citizen of the mid first century C.E. Perhaps Paul’s converts were beginning to grasp just how radical the new teaching was, but most of them came from a culture where a human being meant a citizen of Rome, or rather the Graeco/Roman culture that dominated the Mediterranean world. You were a citizen, or you were hoi polloi, - hardly an individual in a great lump of something less than humanity consisting of slaves and barbarians.

Vast numbers of impoverished and destitute people spread across the Roman world, like flotsam washed up on an empty beach. Beggars were everywhere; they appear in all kinds of contemporary writing, not least in the pages of the New Testament, and with them were the chronically sick, the abandoned children. There were also the petty thieves and prostitutes, escaped slaves and fugitives from justice and a considerable number of unemployed who were desperately trying to avoid dropping into the tide of flotsam. The parable of the day-workers that Matthew preserve for us, gives a poignant glimpse of social conditions: queues of unemployed men gathered in the market place and a small number hired. Not long ago, I saw a film clip from the nineteen thirties that had the exact scene at the dockside of a large seaport and noted the desperate look of those who were turned away. In Matthew’s story, there are still men waiting, hoping as late as three in the afternoon. (Mt. 20.1ff). And, of course, there are still people waiting in similar conditions today, gathering in parking lots in the hope of a day’s laboring.

The Old Testament

To see the beginnings of a different evaluation of the human person, we need now to turn for a look at the Judaism from which Jesus and Paul came . The vocabulary of the OT exposes factors that lie at the root of destitution. A Hebrew word, ebyon, used more than sixty times has a fairly wide meaning covering those in need for various reasons, (Deut. 15.7-11; Job 29.16); a word, (ani), used almost as frequently, however, has a distinct emphasis on poverty resulting from oppression by the powerful and rich (Ps. 35.10; Isa. 3.14-15). A major cause of poverty was, and still is largely, beyond human control: the vagaries of climate resulting in famines, and the ravages of epidemics (though, of course, with greater human concern and effort, the effects of these could, in the 21st century, be dramatically reduced). A second cause was, and certainly still is (very much, however,) under human control: human ill-will, greed, aggression and power-seeking, (the bible lumps these together as sin, not perhaps all that PC, but more accurate than something like “compassion impaired”). Very often in both the Old and New testaments there is a polarity between the rich and the poor: the rich are castigated for idleness, luxury, and greed, and the poor are seen as of special concern to Yahweh. A careful reading suggests that the main condemnation of the rich is not primarily their wealth but their misuse of power. After one of the earliest and most damning indictments of the rich, Amos concludes, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream”. (5.24). Many Americans know this verse because it was often used by Martin Luther King.

Prophetic Tradition in the New Testament

When we turn to the NT, we find Jesus firmly in the prophetic tradition; both in his recorded sayings and in the writings of the earliest followers the same themes recur: the rich man who built new barns; the parable of Dives and Lazarus; the Rich young man to whom Jesus said, “sell all you possess and give it to the poor”; a camel struggling to get through a needle’s eye; Peter’s address to Jesus, “we have left everything to follow you”; the Beatitudes, and especially Luke’s highly radicalized version of Matthew’s “blessed are the poor in spirit”, which becomes “blessed are the poor” (period). This is not an exhaustive list but it indicates the prevalence of the issue for the earliest followers of Jesus.

Poverty in Church History

Christian history produced movements that involved total renunciation of ‘the world’; from the end of the second century, this rigorous interpretation was inter-twined with Hellenistic elements of thought which denigrated the material world and regarded sexuality as demonic. These movements in turn, set up fierce theological and ecclesiastical tensions, evidenced much later by the Papal suppression of the Franciscans because of their advocating extreme poverty in the 14th century and the heated discussions of the Reformation period. Calvin’s mediating comment on Acts 16.15 is worth quoting:

“Many place angelical perfection in poverty, as if the cultivation of piety and obedience to God were impossible without the divestment of wealth…Many fanatics refuse rich men the hope of salvation, as if poverty were the only gate to heaven, although it (poverty) sometimes involves men with greater disadvantages than riches. But Augustine reminds us that rich and poor share the same heritage. …[But] we must beware of the opposite evil, lest riches hinder or so burden us that we advance less readily toward the kingdom of heaven”. (Quoted in Bouwsma, Calvin, 198)

Central to the polarizations of society is the issue of power, and the New Testament approach is clear. Authority justly exercised is to be obeyed (Rom. 13.1), but the radical nature of the gospel is seen in a saying like Mark 10.43 where Jesus contrasts the normal exercise of power with what is to be the norm in the Christian community. There was to be no “lording it” over one another; “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”. The fourth gospel depicts this saying in a dramatic scene: Jesus acts as a slave and washes the disciples' feet. The New Testament, it seems, unambiguously suggests that the Christian is called to follow Jesus by embracing the status of a slave, accepting powerlessness and placing total faith in God. Clearly, the following centuries were to see a great deal of re-interpreting to enable the church to live in “last times” which were to be measured in millennia rather than in decades. Nowhere is this more crucial than in dealing with ethical issues.

Contemporary Poverty

Whether the poor will always be with us is susceptible of an answer in the light of several revolutions in the last century and a half: the Industrial, the Green, and Information revolutions to name a few. Given the will and given the compassion poverty could be removed, but, in fact, we live in a nation of immense wealth where the number of those below the poverty line increases every year. “We can do good things for the poor whenever we wish” seems to be a part of Jesus’ saying that has got lost.

In fairness, it must be noted that since the Industrial revolution, the churches have often been in the forefront of those demanding social responsibility from governments. A good early example is the influence of the Christian Socialist movement (F.D. Maurice, Charles Gore, Scott Holland and B.F. Westcott); they produced a powerful critique of the capitalist system, and one important result of their work was the report of a committee set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Christianity and Industrial Problems. Published in 1918, the report called for “a living wage, action to deal with unemployment and casual labour schemes, cooperation between employers and workers, extensions of municipal services, restrictions on profits and a housing programme”.

Conservatives Perpetuate Poverty

Doubtless the Archbishop’s committee Report horrified the wealthy members of the ECUSA of the time. Still, in the 1930s Keynes’ work (whether by direct influence or a kind of osmosis) produced the economic theory and policy tools that enabled many of the ideas of the Report to become part of the modern state’s approach to social responsibility. In spite of much rhetoric to the contrary, even the USA has incorporated many of these ideas. It is clear, though, that Conservative politicians do not like social programs, would not be sorry for Social Security to collapse (by using all its surpluses for military expenditure?) and are continually eroding Medicare benefits (note current plans to reduce payments to Doctors – see AMA Web Site)
Further, in certain strands of Christianity (which are usually also politically Conservative), a doctrine of Providence, which at one time was more or less universal, is still powerful. In the 19th century, as the horrors of the industrial revolution became known, various groups entered the fray. Among the first were the English Evangelicals; a group known as the Clapham Sect mounted campaigns for the reform of prisons and the regulation of child labor, but held firmly to a view that divine Providence orders the economy, and that the good are rewarded and the bad punished. Handouts were frowned on except for a sub-class known as the “deserving poor”. The more extreme evangelicals did not hesitate to interpret economic crises and natural disasters, (like outbreaks of cholera, frequent in the first half of the 19th century,) as God’s judgment, just as their successors see God’s punishment in AIDs and the hurricane Katrina.

Unhappily such views are still widely current among the far religious right with some mega- churches trumpeting as the Christian blessing the acquisition of great wealth, a kind of anti-asceticism, which can rest happily in the thought that the poor are always (to be) with us.