This article is by Taylor Mertins:
How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her — but now murderers! (Isa 1:21)
There’s a reason that Isaiah 1:21 doesn’t appear in the Revised Common Lectionary. When we think of Advent we conjure up in our minds the Chrismon trees and the lights surrounding the altar. We remember the purple and pink Advent candles and the red plumage of the poinsettias. We consider the plight of Mary and Joseph to the small town of bread knowing not at all what their future would hold. We like our religious observances to be orderly and helpful and we don’t even mind a sermon that steps lightly on our toes because we know that everyone has room for improvement. But then when we hear these words from what some call the “5th gospel,” we experience some painful theological whiplash.
The faithful city has become a whore!
She was once full of justice but now she is full of murderers!
Who wants to hear about that kind of stuff in church?
In her book Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge writes:
For many years, I thought that, during Advent, one was supposed to pretend that Jesus hadn’t been born, so that we would be more excited when Christmas came. Needless to say, this stratagem didn’t work. For me, it was a revelation years later to learn that the last weeks of Pentecost and the first weeks of Advent look forward to the second coming of Christ … In Advent, we don’t pretend, as I once thought, that we are in the darkness before the birth of Christ. Rather, we take a good hard look at the darkness we are in right now, facing and defining it honestly, so that we will understand with utmost clarity that our great hope and only joy is in Jesus’ final victorious coming. (p. 58.)
It is far too easy to take passages like this one from Isaiah and read it through a somewhat anti-Semitic lens — as if Jesus is the wrath of God being poured upon God’s people. Preachers will foolishly wax-lyrical about the idolatry of God’s people from the past all while giving God the glory for arriving as the baby in Bethlehem. But that kind of reading leaves us imagining that Advent is all about pretending that Jesus hasn’t been born, and it prevents us, to use Fleming’s words, from taking a good hard look at the darkness we are in right now.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we are much more like the faithful city that has become a whore than a light shining on a hill. The people we look to for guidance and leadership (whether it be in politics, business, or church), are rebels and companions of thieves. We think they can provide our salvation when we know how quick we all are to run after those things that cannot give us life.
We all live in a world where it is far too easy and far too convenient to ignore those outside our comfortable bubbles while strangely finding comfort in the words of a hymn like Away In A Manger. There was “no crib for a bed” because people like you and I failed to notice the obvious needs of a family in need of shelter. But that’s not the kind of message we want to hear during the season of Advent. We’d rather imagine the animals snuggled closely providing comfort for the King of kings and Lord of lords or how Jesus’ birth will warm our hearts.
But what if we are the darkness that needs to be blotted out by Jesus’ light?
Throughout the history of the church, Christians have had a remarkable propensity to read themselves into the biblical story. When we hear about the two on the road to Emmaus we imagine ourselves as one of those two listening to, and breaking bread with, Jesus. When we hear about the prodigal son we imagine God welcoming us back with open arms after going down the wrong path.
But when the tables are turned and we read about God destroying the rebels and the sinners, we inexplicably reject the mere notion that we could be the rebels and sinners that need destroying. What a time to be God’s church! Advent is the season we conjure up the darkness among us and in us and proclaim the bitter and strange truth: we cannot save ourselves.
No amount of Christmas lights, no number of presents under the tree, no perfectly arranged dinner table can rectify our wrongs. We have become whores to our own desires and dreams, seeking our own interests above that of others. We feast while others are in famine. Isaiah’s declaration about the inherent failures of the whoring city doesn’t preach easily. Few pastors are dumb enough, or brave enough, to proclaim these words from the pulpit. But today, here in the midst of Advent, we are like more like the oak tree whose leaves wither, like gardens without water. We might look around and see families with perfectly behaved children, or individuals who appear marvelously put together, but all of us are perpetuating a world in which our own righteousness is often passed off as God’s righteousness.
And yet, here’s the rub: the more we are told to repent, to change, to be better, the less anything changes. In fact, we usually just cling to the old habits with greater fervor. We don’t need to hear commands to change to repent.
What we need is power from outside of ourselves that will do what we can’t. We need a love that reorients our desires. We need an unearned righteousness that makes the sinner a saint. And, thanks be to God, that power, love, and righteousness has a name: Jesus Christ.
Advent is the ever present reminder that our greatest hope, and our only joy, is in the once and future coming of Jesus Christ. He, in himself, is the new power that is able to make a new creation out of people like us who simply cannot save ourselves.
Jesus is the difference that makes all the difference.
