Advent invites us to see in the dark.
Standing beyond the eggnog, shopping, and angst sits Advent—the reminder that the world will one day be radically changed. I wonder if this sounds like good news to you right now. Advent's main character, John the Baptist, announces with ferocity, "God is coming, and revolution comes with him." This is what the Advent season invites us to orient our imagination toward. These few weeks between now and Christmas stand in defiance against the insulation of eggnog, cheer, and good tidings, lulling us into a cozy sentimentality that maybe things aren't so bad. They also remind us of Jeremiah's assurance that "a day is coming." So John warns us, "Prepare a highway for our God."
Allowing John's strange and uncomfortable interruption of our good cheer means awakening to the reality that here in the dark, suffering, weary world stands Jesus, enticing us into His subversive reclamation of a broken world. But for this to happen, we must stay alert, stay still, stay sober long enough to be fully awake to the reality in which we live. This is John's message, and it is why he is Advent's spokesperson.
I recently learned of a strange hut in the woods of the North Carolina Museum of Art. Apparently, when you go in, you find yourself in total darkness. The hut, it turns out, is an art installation, Cloud Chamber for the Trees and Sky, a camera obscura created by artist Chris Drury. A small hole in the top of the hut acts as a pinhole camera, allowing in just enough light to form the upside-down image of the trees and sky from outside. I learned of this hut in a sermon by the Reverend Samantha Beach Kiley, where she points out the experience's uncanny resemblance to Advent's invitation.
Entering, you stand in total darkness, an uncomfortable darkness that lingers—lasting not seconds but minutes. This means the image does not appear when you first enter and will not appear for the impatient. To experience the image, the only thing you can do is to be still and wait. I imagine if I didn't know any better, I'd enter the hut and, after a few seconds, assume something was wrong and make an early exit. It's possible, even if I knew what was supposed to be coming, the uncomfortable darkness would push me towards the comfort of the door's light—an escape from the darkness. But leaving early means you see nothing. Opening the door to let a bit of light in from another source means seeing nothing. But over time, sitting and waiting in the darkness, as your eyes slowly adjust, the image begins to form all around you of a world breaking in, an upside-down reality forming amid the darkness. This is Advent. This is what John stood in the desert announcing.
The morning this was written, I found myself hugging a weeping security guard in a bustling parking lot. She was in the depths of grief, alone in the world and feeling God-forsaken. We stood in the parking lot together while the world went on around us in its cold, business-as-usual way, oblivious to the sacred, raw vulnerability of humanness displayed in its midst.
She was in the darkness. The circumstances of life had tossed her in the hut. And from that place she looked at me with desperation and said, "I just wish I knew that God was with me. I just don't feel like God is here with me." This is Advent's refrain. The weary world waiting to rejoice. And here was one in the hut, so blinded by the oppression of the darkness, she couldn't even bring herself to grope about to find the door had she wanted to. All she could muster in the moment was grief and waiting. John's message is good news for her, "God is coming, and revolution is coming with him." Here is someone ready to receive God because she sees the world with such painful clarity.
The revolution comes with him, and it comes for us all—God's right-side upping of the world will break in on the entire cosmos. This is not an opt-in or out sort of situation. For people like my security guard friend, the reality that "every valley will be elevated and every mountain leveled" comes as good news. This prospect might be less than ideal for those of us on the more "hilly" side of life, comfortably enjoying scenic views of the valley below. So John says to us, "repent." Open your eyes to the fact that you are in your own sort of valley, albeit a comfortable one, and live in the upside-down clouds and trees that will surely soon appear.
Our places on the hills of life are often valleys of distraction, numbness, or vanity that are precarious in nature. And so John (and Jesus) tell us to be people of the valley, the place the psalmist insists God sets a banquet table in the presence of our enemies.
If you believe the New Testament, the pattern of this world is the way of suffering, sin, and death. We may insulate ourselves from it for a time, but this reality always exists around us. And while beauty and light break through in so many wonderful places (God is still here and still at work, after all), one merely needs to check this week's headlines to be reminded that our world is not well.
Just this week, South Korea and France's governments stood on the verge of chaos; the CEO of United Health Care was murdered in a targeted shooting in Manhattan; the Department of Justice found that the entire Memphis Police Department discriminates and uses excessive force against Black people; Amnesty international concluded Israel is conducting genocide in the Gaza strip; and the IPC, an elaborate global system intended to prevent famine, is failing. On and on, the horrors go.
But even the so-called good news of justice rings hollow. The sentencing of individuals associated with kidnappings, overdoses, killings, and child molestations does not undo what has been done. There is no restoration, only retribution. None of this is God's brand of justice. None of this brings back lost loved ones, lost innocence, and stolen time. None of this shifts the scales back towards human flourishing in any meaningful way. There is no peace here, no wholeness, just retribution and punishment.
And we haven't even begun delving into the darkness we experience personally both to and within ourselves—broken relationships, miscarriages, loss of loved ones, loneliness, greed, hate, bitterness, etc. Our world exists east of Eden as a paradise lost.
But in remembering this, we also are reminded that God's first burst of resistance has already broken in; the first ray of dawn has broken the horizon. Christ has entered the darkness, born in poverty, obscurity, and weakness, forever changing everything. Advent, all at once, reminds us that the world is profoundly broken and that God has profoundly responded to that brokenness. As for us, we sit in the darkness and we wait.
But as we do, we see the upside-down world of light beginning to press in on the darkness around us.
The upside-down world of light that burst forth in the words "I am sorry I've wronged you" and "I forgive you." That light that bursts in when, instead of buying one more thing we dont need, we give the money to a cause doing redemptive works of peace in our world. The light that breaks in when, even in grief and pain and lament, we cry out songs and prayers of praise and hope to the one who was and is and is to come. The light that breaks in when children remind us what hope, joy, and wonder look like. The light that breaks in when we stand with those in pain. The light that breaks in when we realize that even in the darkness, we are not alone, because it is into the darkness that God has gone, and in the darkness that He has promised to be with us.
The rough places are already being made plain, the crooked places made straight, and the highway for our God has been made.
And so this season calls us to stretch our memory back to the reality that God has come, that we are not deserted to death and darkness. While at the same time, stretching our imaginations forward to that great and terrible day when God's peace will burst into every nook and cranny of our hearts and our world—when "wrong shall fail and right prevail," and we may finally and truly shout, "peace on earth!"
Meanwhile, here and now, we wait. As we do, we can see glimpses of the future reality already breaking in around us. The in-between, upside-down community of Jesus lives as people who wait and watch for those upside-down glimpses of new creation images to appear. And in our weakness, in our stillness, in our waiting, we look to the manger and find all we need—the God who made Himself weak, poor, and insignificant in self-giving love is here with us—the God who joins us in the darkness.
And as we wait, we share our specks of light with the world around us—appetizers of the feast to come laid out for all the world here in the valley, here in the presence of our enemies.
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