One modern teacher comments that Advent is
when we all become Jews again. Partly, he
is referring to the sense of waiting.
Down the centuries of Hebrew history, but particularly since the Return
from exile in Babylon, successive conquerors marched across their promised
land, and most recently in Jesus’ time the Romans. Through it all, down to the present day, has
flourished the hope of the Messiah, the Anointed One, who would usher in
Israel's deliverance. In our times,
Israel, as usual surrounded by enemies, knows it is prudent not only to await
the Messiah, but to equip itself to defend by all means available what they
call Ha’Aretz, The Land.
Many supposed messiahs have come and
gone. To faithful Jews, Jesus of
Nazareth, however admirable, is not recognizable as their Messiah. So to Judaism, faith remains very much a
matter of waiting. They have waited
through dispersion to the ends of the earth, and through centuries of
persecution culminating in Auschwitz.
Our secular culture has a very much reduced
capacity for waiting. We are
increasingly conditioned for instant response and satisfaction. People go hopelessly into debt because what
they want they must have now. And
because what so many want so deeply is relief from anxiety and pain, and from
the terrible fear of loneliness and need of reassurance, our culture constantly
makes idols, deliverers, messiahs – whether it is Lifestyle, Money and the
illusion of power, even Family or Race can become an idolatry, and so can
fundamentalist religion. But God
informed Moses: No gods before me. Advent is
a time in which, in our waiting, we stop and look at our gods and
idolatries.
Simple psychology informs us that our
idols, one way or another, turn out to be reflections of ourselves. We make idols to meet our needs, and the
primary idol is our own ego – what I want, how I imagine myself to be. But to be a Jew means forsaking all
idols. We are given sense and worth and
identity, recognition and meaning, by the summons, the word, of God in our
hearts.
For instance – and this is one seminal
example in our memories – we cannot make sense or in any way explain or
domesticate the principal nightmare of our lifetime, the Holocaust, and its
relentless implacable choice of utter cruelty and injustice. Christian folk and atheists keep asking,
Where was God at Auschwitz? But that is
not the point. A Jew does not expect such
a thing to be capable of sense or explanation.
The point is to refuse comfort, to wait.
This was eventually clear to me one day at Auschwitz when we came upon
an inscription in Hebrew. It was a
quotation from the Book of Job, and it said, Oh God, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. Advent
is about the courage, the faith, to stay with the pain in life and the
unanswered questions, to refuse to make idols or adopt slick solutions, to be
still, silent, consenting.
If we want to be free from pain and
anxiety, there are 101 ways to attempt that – and good luck with them all. But the journey of faith entails knowing how
to wait, how to take the rough with the smooth, how to set ego aside, how to
make space for love and freedom. And I
think members of this group know that very well.
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