Advent mirrors exile. Much of what we would call the church age does. We are a people claimed by and set apart by God who continue to languish in sin, darkness, and death. We are a people with every reason to rejoice and every reason to mourn all at once. Infused with God's presence, we long for it still.

"What's prayer like for you?" While my pastoral question comes from a place of care and curiosity, it often falls like a judgmental hammer. Its followed by several responses. An awkward, uncomfortable stumbling about or a dismissive brush to the side, "it's fine," are not uncommon. Occasionally it's met with disarming humor, "what prayer life?" or brutal honesty, "meh, it's pretty non-existent." The reality is I rarely meet a person satisfied with their prayer life. 

When we think about who we are, what it means to be human, we realize that all life is meant to be communion. We were made to live in intimacy and love with God and one another. We were made to live in Love. Because we live in a fractured state within a shattered world, so much around us pulls us away from communion towards disintegration. The distractions in us and around us drag us towards the non-being of isolation. We are caught in an undertow of sin.

The story of Israel’s liberation into divine relationship is our story in so many ways. As we enter Holy Week we are left with the reminder that divine deliverance is and was always about restoration into divine relationship. The emancipating God liberates us from the empire of the present evil age and into divine communion.

It can seem like faith would be easier if we could only see—miracles, God, whatever, just anything more than what we see now. But this is never the case. We, like Israel, are a forgetful bunch. The divine splendors of yesterday fade quickly, and our fidelity wanes. Emancipation was not won by us, neither will our inheritance be. Faith in Yahweh begins and ends with the knowledge that it is God who carries us, always.

It can be easy to subjugate God to our specific ways of worshipping or talking about God. In God’s grace, patience, and willingness to condescend to us, we can forget that Yahweh is also the fiery God of emancipation. As we edge closer to Easter, we should hold in tension the terrifying power, authority, and strength able to wrest sin and death to the ground, and Yahweh’s insistence on accomplishing this through His own debasement, and humiliation. All at once, at Jesus’ crucifixion, the humility and the power of God are most clearly disclosed.

The Exodus makes one thing apparent. God's vision for the world excludes and refuses to tolerate the exploitative nature of empire. Thus, the lesser-known laws following on the heels of the ten commandments curb the predatory greed that is the empire's life force. The new society of Yahweh is not one of predation but neighborly love.

As we cross the threshold of Lent's midpoint, we traverse a massive turning point in the Exodus narrative. Turning from Pharaoh and the exploitative empire, Israel gazes upon the glory of their redeeming God. But emancipation is not freedom into nothing. This sort of independent, enlightenment freedom into personal autonomy risks Israel becoming the same type of empire they were liberated from. Instead, Israel will be shaped by sustained practices, becoming an emancipated community that stands defiant to the pharaonic system of exploitation and abuse.

So much of Lent is about confronting the wilderness and looking towards the glory of God. It is a picture of our daily life with Jesus in this respect. We, too, look back at our deliverance wrought by the strong outstretched hands of Jesus. We know and believe that we were miraculously snatched from the grip of death at that moment. Yet we look up and see nothing but wasteland.

The Redemption and continued preservation of this emancipated band depend entirely on Yahweh. The final act of the emancipation of God's people makes this clear. Israel and Egypt have been repeatedly shown who Yahweh is. Now Isreal enters the desert into a brave new world where Yahweh reigns.

The escalating conflict between Yahweh and Pharoah reaches a stunning and unsettling climax. It is now the Egyptians crying out (11:6) and Moses (and his God) who are feared throughout Egypt, not Pharaoh (11:3). In a few short chapters, the power dynamics have flipped. The ruthless oppressor of chapter 1 is now pitiable, weak, and entirely at the mercy of the slaves and their God.

In a confrontation of divine authority, Yahweh unleashes a barrage of nine plagues on the empire. The most powerful being on the face of the earth, Pharaoh, prooves powerless to stave off the God he scoffs at. The Egyptians and Pharaoh now know this God.

Yahweh's assurance of freedom is not only a freedom from, but a freedom to. From the outset, two things are clear, 1) Israel's time as slaves to Egypt has come to an end, and 2) this implies a necessary transfer of allegiance from Pharaoh to Yahweh.

We need the presence of God. It is the goal to which we are freed, and the means to our freedom. Without it, we are left to swim in the swirling currents of our oppressor. With it, everything changes.

The book of Exodus begins as a story about slaves. An uncomfortable beginning, but an important one. This is where all of our stories begin. It’s where the story of you and God begins, in ashes.

There's some unique language thrown around in theological circles that can go a long way in helping us understand the nature of God and God's activity in the world. One of my favorites is irruption. It is also a particularly "Adventy" type of word. I simply cannot hear, say, or type it without it forming an image in my head. It immediately sparks my imagination, igniting divine expectation.

Advent, like the life of the Christian, is a season of contrast and resistance. It is shockingly a dissatisfied life.

Jesus' coming, both past, and future, confronts us because it will not allow us to go on our merry way and live our lives unaffected by His coming. The world as you know it is gone. A new world has come.

The Jesus revolutionary believes that when Jesus returns to flip the world right side up, the weak will be made strong, the poor rich, the unknown known. We begin Advent by reminding ourselves that we are revolutionaries, and the lives we live are lived to one end. Resist the night, and share our specks of light in hope and love with the world around us.

Preparing for Advent. Advent is a season of hope. As such, it is anticipatory and impoverished. It begins in the darkness‚—the darkness among us, the darkness opposing us, and the darkness within us. We see it, name it, and from that uncomfortable place, resist it—all the while attempting to do so in a wash of black Friday deals and mass consumerism.