First Sunday of advent: Desire for redemption

Today’s readings: Isaiah 63,16-17; 64,1.3-8; 1 Corinthians 1,3-9; Mark 13,33-37

The struggle to survive is innate to every creature and comes out forcefully in us whenever we are in grief and mortified. Physically and mentally we combat to the very end when under pressure. The deeper the desire to be redeemed, the stronger the inner force to keep going.

Today we enter Advent time, which basically is about this need of redemption, expressed in today’s Scriptures as waiting for God. God is never a given, and waiting for God is a basic attitude of true, authentic faith. The God we believe in is a God of surprises, who manifests Himself not as we expect Him.

This is the summons in today’s gospel to “Stay awake!”, to be alert to God’s innovations. Our main task as a community of faith is to be awake to what is going on around us while discerning God’s footprints manifest or hidden. Like the prophet Isaiah, Jesus is summoning us at this very particular time in history to refresh our hope in the face of a social reality that is dysfunctional in many aspects.

Isaiah dreams of fresh alternatives which eventually liberated Jewish exiles to think differently, act differently, and speak differently. If only we had the courage of Isaiah to move on and exit the ruts of an often-closed religious outlook that blocks rather than facilitates our search for the true God.

As theologian Walter Brueggemann writes: “If the Church is, in fact, in exile, as I believe it to be, then to try to do ministry as if we are practising imperial religion robs us of energy”. It is this energy that this Advent season should unleash in us, rather than being just a time to unpack and repeat the same old story which for many is no longer news.

While Jesus in the gospel calls on us to be on our guard, Isaiah shows how easy it is to give up waiting on God. Isaiah voices the deep desire of his people in distress and in darkness when he says: “Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!” The God of whom Isaiah speaks is not the God of our imagination and the path to find Him is not always the path traced by us.

The Christmas narrative is about an ‘adventum’, an event that is part of history. But when He came, God went unnoticed by many, and continues to be denied by many others to date. It is a major challenge to connect comprehensively with those for whom Jesus is a non-event, while we take our narrative for granted. Yet the desire for redemption is common ground for all, across all borders of religions and cultures.

Our task is to grasp and interpret this desire for redemption as it manifests itself in the way people today are living and coping. This would be more intriguing at a time so peculiar when humanity at large is rediscovering itself as very fragile and unprepared despite all the assurances we thought we had. We may be speaking of a God who has nothing to say to myriads of people across the globe.

Very often, and rightly so, non-believers are annoyed by our talk of God when it lacks passion for humanity. Passion for God and passion for humanity go together, especially if we talk of the God of Jesus Christ. With all the doctrinal ready-made answers at hand, we cannot bypass the enigma of existence and the unpredictability of history.

The deep desire for redemption comes hand in hand with owning our fragility. Authentic faith transforms this fragility in a sacred space, making us desire for more of him. Church Father Gregory of Nyssa, in his Life of Moses, writes: “The true sight of God is this: that the one who gazes up to God never stops yearning”.

Independent journalism costs money. Support Times of Malta for the price of a coffee.

Support Us