part three of waiting in advent: grief, lament and hope

In my previous posts I have shared two distinctive aspects of Advent waiting: a spirituality of simmering, fermenting, listening, percolating, nourishing; and, a restless patience shaped by prophetic imagination. The first, as articulated by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, challenges contemporary culture's obsession with bottom lines and hurry. She writes: "We equate waiting with wasting... and the more life asks us to wait, the more we anxiously hurry. The tempo of haste in which we live has less to do with being on time or the efficiency of a busy life - it has more to do with our being unable to wait." The heart of this winter spirituality is stated with poetic clarity in To Dance with God as the author evokes the Virgin Mary:

As in pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of becoming and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a life of value. (p. 62)

The second path of waiting in Advent is informed by the exilic prophets of ancient Israel. In the Western Christian tradition this wisdom finds expression in the art and music of this season. Think "O come, o come Emmanuel," "Comfort, comfort ye my people," "Of the Parent's Heart Begotten," or "Now Bless the God of Israel." Think II Isaiah's insistence that the God of the exodus will not abandon Israel forever. Think Ezekiel's vision from the valley of dry bones or Daniel's insistence that the powers of empire will not survive the justice of the Lord. The efficacy of God's shalom in human history endures from everlasting to everlasting. To trust this truth beyond the obvious, however requires regular restatements of the Holy One's presence in our corporate and personal worship, prayer and song. Henri Nouwen writes that this is how holy anticipation feeds the soul:

To the deepest longings of the human heart and point to the truth waiting to be revealed beyond all lies and deceptions. These visions nurture our souls and strengthen our hearts. They offer us hope when we are close to despair, courage when we are tempted to give up on life, and trust when suspicion seems the more logical attitude. Without these visions our deepest aspirations, which give us the energy to overcome great obstacles and painful setbacks, will be dulled and our lives will become flat, boring, and finally destructive. Our visions enable us to live the full life.

The third practice called forth in the spirituality of Advent waiting is embodied in grief and lament. Walter Breuggemann in his book Reality, Grief and Hope posits that the task of ancient Israel's prophets is truth telling. They must name reality in all its brokenness in order for God's people to both grieve and repent. For when the faithful empty themselves of pride, hubris and ideology then, and only then, are their imaginations open enough to hear the still small voice of the Holy One calling creation into wholeness. Brueggemann puts it like this a summary of his text (see https://eerdword.com/2015/06/08 /three-urgent-prophetic-tasks-walter-brueggemann-on-reality-grief-hope/)

+ First, the prophet bursts the bubble of ideology: this is the naming of truth and reality within a social context. 

I take “ideology” to mean a passionate commitment to a view of social reality, even if available data tells to the contrary. In our case that dominant ideology is consumer capitalism that eventuates in systemic greed that sets neighbor against neighbor in pursuit of the same goods. The result is that social goods are privatized to individual interest according to power and wealth, and the common good is largely neglected. That ideology, voiced in endless propaganda and advertising, commends a system of private gratification at the expense of the common good. But in fact that system of fearful greed does not work and does not make anyone happy. It is a fraudulent theory of social relationships.

+ Second, the prophet invites God's people to own their loss: grief and lament are the holy alternatives to anxiety and fear.

(The second) prophetic task to break that denial, and that can only be done by honest, public acknowledgement that takes the form of grief for what was that is being lost. Ours is a society of great loss; that loss, moreover, generates fear and anxiety. But until the denial is broken by the public acknowledgement of grief, we are unable to come to terms with the reality of our social condition. Old patterns of privilege and entitlement cannot be sustained any longer!

+ And third the prophet invites God's peace and steadfast love as an alternative to despair: the prophetic imagination becomes the path to hope.

Despair is countered in prophetic parlance, by acts of vigorous hope. The prophets articulate what God has yet promised on which the faithful rely. Such hope is voiced, for example, by Martin Luther King in his mantra, “I have a dream.” The dream he dreams is the promise of God; such prophetic hope insists that the circumstance of social failure has not defeated God’s capacity to generate new social possibility.

Brueggemann concludes - and I concur - that we cannot imagine alternatives to our brokenness while maintaining the lies of ideology. Neither can we find the wisdom or energy to sing "new songs" while in the throes of grief or despair. When these trials are over, however, when they have been fulfilled, when we have hit bottom and realized that we cannot create blessings by our own hand, then and only then are we empty enough to creatively imagine new ways of being. This is how the gifts of prophetic imagination - the Word of the Lord - become flesh in our era..

Psalm 130 gives shape and form to waiting shaped by lament. It begins with the anguish of brokenness:  Out of the depths I cried to YHWH. It concludes with a patience that anticipates God's nature as revealed in history: 

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord,

more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

The Hebrew verb yachal translated here as hope stands in relationship to the verb qavah rendered as wait. Elsewhere qavah becomes hope in English (as in Job 6:11 or Psalm 33) while yachal becomes wait (see Job 30 or Psalm 119.) To wait within this hope is to be free from ideological illusions, empty of denial and open to the legacy of God's grace and justice in history. Psalm 130 closes with words repeated throughout the Hebrew Bible: in the Lord there is steadfast love. This love in all its manifestations invites us into the practice Advent waiting for this is a love which endures forever.