The Advent of Agency
Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash
I stumbled onto the book by Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope (2022) when asked by Broadleaf Books to write an endorsement for the book that I happily did. I am quite moved by the book and commend it to you as a reader. The book is a reconsideration of the traditional Advent texts from Matthew and Luke read through the eyes of Palestinian suffering and oppression. Our use of the book may serve two purposes at the same time: (a) to reflect in fresh ways on the Advent texts, and (b) to offer a fresh awareness of the plight of Palestinians. The connection between Advent and the Palestinians is made by suggesting that the “first Advent,” when the gospel narrative was first “performed,” was in the midst of an oppressed people who were invited by the writers to revolutionary, transformative hope.
Here I will reflect only on Nikondeha’s first chapter, “Silence and Suffering,” through which she characterizes the sociopolitical scene in Palestine in the first century under Roman oppression. She appeals to the Books of Maccabees and to the public resistance that the Maccabees mounted against Roman oppression and exploitation. Specifically, Nikondeha notices the “laments” at the outset of I Maccabees that are a powerful echo of the Book of Lamentations. Thus working backward, Roman oppression…the Maccabees…public lament…The Book of Lamentations. In the Book of Lamentations, Israel grieved the destruction wrought by the Babylonians who had razed their beloved Jerusalem:
How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks;
among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her;
all her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
they have become her enemies…
Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted on the day of his fierce anger (Lamentations 1:1-2, 12; see Psalm 137).
Nikondeha writes, referring to the initial Maccabees, Mattathias, father of five initiative-taking sons:
Maybe Mattathias reached for the book of Lamentations and recited the poems of grief handed down from the Jews before him. They had survived the Babylonian destruction of the first temple in 587 BCE and were acquainted with catastrophic loss. It was another time when the Jewish people were hard-pressed and left without the light of the Everlasting Flame (p. 9).
In I Maccabees, we can identify laments that reflect in powerful ways the cadences of the older lamentations:
He [Antiochus] shed much blood,
and spoke with great arrogance.
Israel mourned deeply in every community,
rulers and elders groaned,
young women and young men became faint,
the beauty of the women faded.
Every bridegroom took up the lament;
she who sat in the bridal chamber was mourning.
Even the land trembled for its inhabitants,
and all the house of Jacob was clothed with shame (I Maccabees 1:24-28).
For the citadel became an ambush against the sanctuary,
an evil adversary of Israel at all times.
On every side of the sanctuary they shed innocent blood;
they even defiled the sanctuary.
Because of them the residents of Jerusalem fled;
she became a dwelling of strangers;
she became strange to her offspring,
and her children forsook her.
Her sanctuary became desolate like a desert;
her feasts were turned to mourning,
her sabbaths to a reproach,
her honor into contempt.
Her dishonor now grew as great as her glory;
her exaltation was turned into mourning
(I Maccabees 1:36-40; see 2:7-13, 3:45, 50-53).
Now the reason I dwell on this two-step lament is that, not unlike Nikondeha, I suggest that lament is the appropriate posture for Christians at Advent. Note well that this is a very different accent from our usual emphasis on repentance. No doubt there is due cause for repentance among us. But before we get to that, Lamentations is a vigorous out-loud recognition of our loss of an old world we treasured that has now departed. Thus in the Book of Lamentations the loss concerned the old, beloved city of Jerusalem with its king and temple, all terminated by the Babylonians. For the Maccabees in the second century BCE, it was obvious enough that the predatory Roman Empire only imitated the exploitation of Babylon, so that a new inventory of laments was properly sounded.
The theme and out-loud practice of lament, I propose, is a proper way for us to engage the Advent season. The work of Christians might well be a deep, shared articulation of loss among us. We may indeed grieve loss:
Concerning the demise of the old established church of the Eisenhower years when church participation was normal and taken for granted. All that is gone now! The quest now is for a new faithful form of church that is not dependent upon buildings, programs, and staff, but is rather occupied with missional witness and sacramental practice of song and prayer. That loss is due cause for lament.
Concerning the disappearance of the old white male world of control and privilege (with its tacit assumption of heterosexuality). That world was for some a wondrous life of wellbeing and certainty in which people of color and all sorts of others (who were “lesser”) lived in conformist silence and subordination. To be sure, some neo-evangelicals still want to assure that that old world is recoverable and kept intact. But it is gone! While some are glad about that, a large body of our society must grieve in acknowledgement of that loss beyond recovery in order that it may be knowingly relinquished.
Concerning the singular dominance of the United States when “America” was “manifestly” God’s chosen people and could do whatever it wanted in the world. That limitless capacity is now harshly checked by the rise of China as a world power, and all the brave nationalist talk will not reverse that new historical reality. We must come to terms with a new world not of our making.
There is so much to lament when we think of the “good old days” that were “good” only for some among us. Currently there is so much among us that is to be wept…all that loss! Advent is preparation for a “newness coming” that requires the relinquishment of what is old and gone, even if the old has a deep and insistent grip upon us. The act of lament is a public form of truth-telling in spite of our continuing wish for otherwise. It is an act that crowds in upon our shared propensity for denial. There is no one, moreover, to be truthful about our common loss except the church and the synagogue and their shared legacy of honest truth-telling about loss. That work is urgent and must be addressed.
That voicing of loss in the Book of Lamentations is almost unrelieved. Indeed the Book ends in an unanswered question about rejection (5:22).There is, nonetheless, a moment of relief in the Book of Lamentations that is often noticed:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness (3:22-23).
Right in the middle of the loss, Israel in its lament commits a bold act of remembering, goes back to the old tradition, and finds there compelling witness to the fidelity of God, a fidelity that is not interrupted by present calamity. These two verses speak the counter themes that are often reiterated in Israel’s praise:
steadfast love…tenacious fidelity!
mercy...voiced in the plural!
faithfulness...utter reliability!
For an instant amid its lament, Israel can pause to remember and affirm.
In the same way it is possible in the church, in the midst of lament over our loss of traditional church, traditional culture, and dominant nationalism, to give voice to assurances about God’s fidelity that persists in and through our deepest losses, and is not disrupted by those losses. Thus we have loss to lament; but then we come to affirmation. The church can celebrate that affirmation in the face of lament; but that affirmation leads to neither resignation nor complacency. Rather, it leads to agency, to the readiness and capacity to act in constructive, imaginative ways in defiance toward newness. This process evokes in Israel a readiness to celebrate and perform newness amid the shambles of loss. In ancient Israel that move from lament through fidelity to agency is performed, for example, by Nehemiah, an exiled Jew who served in the Persian court. Nehemiah knew about loss, lament, and grief:
When I heard these words [concerning the devastation of Jerusalem] I sat down and wept, and mourned for days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments; let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel…Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man!” [that is, the Persian king] (Nehemiah 1:4-11).
Nehemiah’s grief, however, did not lead him to passivity. Rather, when he had the chance, a chance created by his grief noticed by the Persian king, he explained his grief to the king:
Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my ancestors’ graves, lies waste, and its gates have been destroyed by fire? (2:3).
This acknowledgement of grief and devastation is followed immediately by a request to the king that he be dispatched by royal favor and with royal resources back to the ruined city of Jerusalem:
If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, I ask that you send me to Judah, the city of my ancestors’ graves, so that I may rebuild it (2:5).
The remainder of the book follows the course of Nehemiah’s restorative actions.
The case is not different for Ezra, the scribe who served alongside Nehemiah. Ezra is capable of deep, honest lament:
O Lord, God of Israel, you are just, but we have escaped as a remnant, as is now the case. Here we are before you in our guilt, though no one can face you because of this (Ezra 9:15).
Here we are, slaves to this day—slaves in the land that you gave to our ancestors to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. Its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins; they have power also over our bodies and over our livestock at their pleasure, and we are in great distress (Nehemiah 9:36-37).
Ezra’s grief-cum-guilt did not lead to his passivity, but to constructive action. Above all, in Nehemiah 8, Ezra leads the community in the fresh articulation of faith by the reintroduction of Torah that resulted in a Torah-based community that could readily distinguish itself knowingly from the world around.
Thus the reading of Nikondeha has led me to think about the sequence of:
grief voiced,
hope reiterated, and
agency embraced.
I suggest that this may be a workable way to enter into the Advent season and its texts. Nikondeha goes on to consider in some detail the traditional Advent texts that come as reassurance and summons to those who have engaged in the honesty of grief.
It is not difficult to imagine this practice of Advent if the church has the courage and will to resist the commercial pressure of Christmas coming too soon. At every step in this process the church will be profoundly at odds with our commercial context.
instead of denial…grief;
instead of self-indulgent complacency…hope,
instead of resignation…agency!
The bet is that in doing so the church will offer honesty for which many people yearn, even as they may dread facing it. Thus our task might be:
The honest articulation of loss that is all around us. Conservatives and evangelicals are not the only ones who have a long, deep attachment to the way the world has been in former time. But imagine a congregation, altogether, actually naming the loss of current forms of church, culture, and national preeminence. This catalogue of losses allows for us to include in the process more intimate, personal, and hidden losses as well.
The bold unrestrained articulation of God’s fidelity. This will permit and require an affirmation that is more frontal and scandalous than a generic hope for love all around us. The testimony is to the God who has the whole created world held in safe hands and who, in Israel’s memory, has performed mighty deeds of transformation. In Christian cadence, these transformative deeds come to fullest form in the narrative of Jesus. There can be nothing anemic in this affirmation.
The summons that the gospel issues is that those to whom God is available in hope are empowered to have agency, to be about the good work of restoration and rehabilitation. In the case of Ezra and Nehemiah that work was the restoration of Judaism. In the case of the Maccabees the work was to resist Rome, a resistance that led to the restoration of the Jerusalem temple (and the festival Hanukkah).
In our own time and place those who grieve honestly and hope well are summoned and empowered to like work of restoration and rehabilitation.
The rehabilitation and restoration of the church will require a reengagement with the most elemental claims of the gospel, and thus to missional engagement for the work of God’s neighborly emancipation and restoration.
The rehabilitation and restoration of our culture will require the creation of a neighborly multi-cultural fabric that takes each neighbor seriously and offers an infrastructure in order to secure the dignity, safety, and wellbeing of each neighbor, no matter how vulnerable they may be.
The restoration and rehabilitation of our national state includes fostering democratic practices that protect the public voice of every potential voter and the refusal of the anti-democratic efforts to reduce the influence of the many for the sake of control by the few.
Nikondeha reads the Advent texts in the context of the original population of the left-behind and the vulnerable who are the antecedents of, among others, current Palestinians. She shows, moreover, that the Advent texts are the launching pad for the narrative summons that is to follow in the gospel accounts that constitute a call to costly discipleship. Thus in the gospel of Matthew it takes only until chapter 4 for the summons to be issued:
As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him (Matthew 4:18-22).
In the gospel of Luke, the same account is in chapter 5:
For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him (Luke 5:9-11).
The summons comes more readily in the gospel of Mark:
As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little further, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him (Mark 1:16-20).
The matter is early and somewhat different in the gospel of John:
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus (John 1:35-37).
The Advent texts are not freestanding; they are openers for what is to follow. They are transcripts of grief and hope that issue in agency.
Jesus of course knows Israel’s lament tradition well. He reiterates the tradition of grief concerning the failure and fragility of Jerusalem, the citadel of power that is now wholly in jeopardy.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Luke 13:34)
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (Luke 19:41-44).
Advent is our “time of the visitation from God”! Advent is a time to recognize that visitation and to sign on for the new regime that is “at hand.” It may indeed be that this sequence of grief/hope/agency will enable the church to resist the commercial reductionism of our culture, and to engage in the good work of the new world. Nikondeha ends her rich and suggestive book in this way:
Each reversal in the advent narrative is a seed tossed into the soil, placed for hope to take root. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds are the grassroots practitioners showing us the hope that erodes empires. Among the tools we are given by the first advent in Palestine are hospitality, solidarity, and nonviolence—ready for the hopeful to use as we subvert the empires God will one day bring to an end.
As the magi don’t just see the star from the East and marvel at it, we learn from them to act in hope and follow the star that guides us. We travel in the light of that star, in and through the trajectory of the advent story toward—always—resurrection! (pp. 86-87).
Walter Brueggemann
October 12, 2022
