Awake in Advent…2 – 2 December 2016

May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. [Romans 15:5-6]

In 1944, a senior American federal judge with the unlikely name of Judge Learned Hand was administering the oath of citizenship to a group of immigrants in New York.  He spoke to them about liberty, and this is what he said:  What then is the spirit of liberty?  I cannot define it.  I can only tell you my own faith.  The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit that weighs their interests alongside its own without bias… the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten, that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

Paul is writing to the Christians at Rome.  Being a Christian in Rome was illegal, or very soon became so because Christians typically refused to join in the compulsory Emperor cult – and various emperors starting with Nero made their lives perilous and uncertain.  And so Paul refers to God as the God of steadfastness and encouragement…  A couple of rather nice Greek words in there.  “Steadfastness”, in 21^st century English, we might be more likely to render as “steadiness”.  The Greek hupomonē (ύπομονη) means staying put, not running away.  It’s one of the three classic Benedictine vows, the vow of Stability.  As always, this steadfastness is firstly God’s steadfastness towards us – but then likewise, in a confusing, tempting, often abusive secular culture, the followers of Jesus are to learn quiet steadfastness.  This is not obstinacy or any refusal to change.  It is knowing humbly but surely, and gladly, to whom we belong.  And it is a product of having come to terms with mortality, fear and the fact of an unfair world.

The other attribute of God Paul cites here is “encouragement”… the God of steadfastness and encouragement.  This time the Greek word ought to sound familiar:  paraklēsis (παρακλησις).  Paraclete – it’s usually translated in the English bibles as Holy Spirit, or Comforter, or Advocate.  The paraclete is the person who comes and says, you are not alone… the person you most want to see arrive.  It is the one who says, I can join my resources to yours.  That is what God does, the God of… paraklēsis. 

Grown-up faith has discovered that freedom is not and never was freedom to have things the way we might want, even in religion.  It is an inner freedom within the circumstances we have been given, whether Rome of the 1^st century or the bewildering facts of 2016 and the looming perils ahead.  Judge Learned Hand saw it as a freedom to live without walls of our making – actual walls or social walls or religious walls.  Paul writes:  May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… he writes to the Church at Rome.  Well certainly, silence and stillness teach us that lingering divisions and disputes, ancient memories and resentments, fears and hatreds, may be set aside.  They have no power over us, and they have no place in the kingdom of Christ.