Advent Invitations

We see it in our interactions with our politicians and business leaders, we, like children, look for someone who will take all our troubles away.

“Clean the waterways that we have fouled! Rebuild the schools we have encumbered with garbage and weeds! Clear the backlog of the courts that we have created by our laziness, violence and greed! End the corruption, but don’t stop the Carnival! Come and save us from ourselves, but don’t change us!” Into this the Church presents Advent, the moment when we give vent to our longing for a Saviour. We put up lights of wreaths and trees and we sing the ancient songs.

So why does nothing seem to change? We are skilful at avoidance, we call to a saviour but sabotage any work of transformation that demands a change in our regular way of life.

This is one reason why tinsel and plastic dominate our preparations for what we call the ‘coming of our Saviour’, because if we turned aside from the glitter and the noise and the hustle, we might just hear His invitations: To level the mountains that we have erected between one another by our walls and ‘not talking’ and our boxing of people into categories of race, colour, class and religion etc, etc, that allow us to refuse to see them as sharing from the same inadequacies that cripple us.

To fill up the valleys created by ignorance and fear that allow us to see the other as a threat, a competitor, a rival, instead of as a partner, a companion on the road of life that passes along the ways of our common home.

To stop turning everything into a saleable commodity - education, health care, justice - so that our values are less dictated by the bottom line and more by the welfare of the greatest number of our fellow citizens.

To be satisfied with enough’, so that more people can share at the table. But we will only do this if we recognise and acknowledge that we need help.

To call for a Saviour is to acknowledge that by oneself, one is incapable of getting out of the hole one is in. It requires clear sightedness, humility and acceptance of help, qualities that we associate with weakness and stupid people. But take a quiet look inward, we are all weak and in need of wisdom.

Let Advent be the time when we face the truth - crime plans cannot save us, new buildings cannot save us, a change of faces in the seat of power cannot save us. God can, and wants to. But we have to allow a radical change of heart that welcomes the other as relative and not as enemy, as co-worker and not as rival to be destroyed; that understands that salvation is a deep matter and not a ‘one-and-done’ statement.

It is to decide to put your steps in the way of the Lord and not to return to the idols of power, pleasure and greed.

Happy Advent, the Saviour is coming!