John Yoder gives us a totally different look at Advent. He notes in Mary's song in Luke (after hearing that she'll give birth to Jesus) that this is not a song of a sweet maiden but...
...of Maccabees (the Jewish revolutionaries): it speaks of dethroning the mighty and exalting the lowly, of filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. Mary's praise to God is a revolutionary battle cry.
He goes on to say that every revolutionary thinks that "the system" is corrupt and needs overthrowing - and that's what the "gospel" is - a call to revolt - a call to do away with the old and to bring in the new. In defining the word "gospel" or (evangelion in Greek) he says...
Originally it is not a religious or a personal term, it is news which impinges upon the fate of the community. [The gospel or] "Good news" is the report brought by a runner to a Greek city, that a distant battle has been won, preserving their freedom; or that a son has been born to the king, assuring a generation of political stability. "Gospel" is good news having seriously to do with the people's welfare.
What a great take on a word that we have allowed to grow boring and mundane. The good news of Jesus' birth isn't meant to make us warm and fuzzy but to stir us to action- casting off the old system of selfishness and pride and working to build a new community of sacrificial love and good works. Yoder closes by saying...
The need is not for consolation or acceptance but for a new order in which men may live together in love. In his time, therefore, as in ours, the question of revolution, the judgment of God upon the present order and the imminent promise of another one, is the language in which the gospel must speak. What most people mean by revolution, the answer they want, is not the gospel; but the gospel, if it be authentic, must so speak as to answer the question of revolution. This Jesus did.
1 comment:
Thank you for stirring our old traditional ways of thinking about Advent, even if they move us to do only a small thing in order to encounter God. To go away from the pressures of society's take on the season, even for just a few minutes is a blessing.
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