Don't miss Dan Clendenin's "Where God Was Homeless," at his Journey with Jesus Foundation site:
"The central plot of the Christmas story is not one of glitz, glitter, conspicuous consumption, and superficial makeovers, but of a God who assumed human flesh and entered our broken world with all of its hells, both deeply personal and tragically global, in order to embrace and redeem us. One of the earliest Christian confessions, known as the Apostles' Creed, affirms that Jesus "descended into hell," which is actually a decidedly Christmas sort of thought."
At his First Thoughts, Bill Loader writes:
"Fairly or unfairly, John and Jesus become paradigms of spirituality or theology, the one, with its focus on threat and warning, concerned that what is right is done; the other, with its focus on people, concerned to bring wholeness and healing. Historically such a contrast is scarcely justified. But within the narratives such tendencies are evident, even though this is least recognisable in Matthew. Still, the answer of Jesus is powerful. It could, of course, mean little more than: tell John about the fantastic miracles; stun him with that! More likely it reflects the prophetic visions which remain the inspiration for the tradition today: tell John about change and transformation in people’s lives. That is what we are here for and that is what excites us. Spiritualities excited by anything else (like the magic of miracles, like overcoming the enemies of God by judgement, like getting all the rules right) miss the point."
Paul Nuechterlein (Girardian Reflections) sees verse 12 as an important key to understanding this passage. Don't miss his exegesis of this verse, and his understanding of biazetai in terms of a mimetic reading of this passage. Nuechterlein stresses the centrality of skandalon in this passage:
"A pinnacle of being scandalized is falling into addiction, a love/hate relationship with the model/obstacle. Has our celebration of Christmas reached the addictive point yet? Has Christmas become a scandal for us? The Christ child is the one who came to free us from such scandals, as long as we aren't scandalized by him. "Blessed is anyone who is not scandalized...."
Perhaps part of the "scandal" is explored by John Cobb in this week's Process & Faith Lectionary Commentary:
"The focus is once again on hope for the inbreaking of the new. This time the anticipated new is the Second Coming of the Lord. This expectation arose precisely because so many of the ancient hopes were no fulfilled by Jesus. He lived, died, and rose again, but the course of history continued on its way. The apocalyptic expectations interwoven with the historical ones in the Old Testament were not realized. Even such fulfillment as there was of historical expectations fell far short. If the hopes of Israel were to be realized, hopes into which Gentiles had now been drawn, Jesus must return. This time he would not come humbly as a carpenter and die the humiliating death of crucifixion. Instead he would come dramatically on the clouds with hosts of angels to impose his will....
"Those who are wise do not cling to the old forms of hope in new situations. They learn from both the fulfillments and the disappointments. They learn also from the transformations. They formulate their hope in new ways. From Jesus we learn that God is to be found in all that makes for life and healing, and for peace and justice. God does not force these on the world. We can work with God or join in the massive resistance that is so visible in human history. We can participate in Jesus’ faithfulness even in suffering and to death. Or we can participate in the forms of human life that led to crucifying him. No doubt most of us participate in some measure in both. But our hopes now grow out of this understanding of God’s working in us and in the world."
I have posted my own Advent Story about a time when my own hopes (for my son) were transformed. Again this week, although we are supposed to have moved on to joy (!), I continue to think about hope and what it means. I continue to think about the dead-end ways I find myself wanting to write "happily ever after" in terms that are long-sense dead or outgrown, and in doing so, I miss the really good stuff.
At Dylan's Lectionary Blog, Sarah Dylan Breuer also talks about transformation of hope:
"So what kind of Jesus are we expecting will be coming back at the climax of all things? Are we hoping that this next time, or at the last time, Jesus will finally come back as The Terminator? If so, we'll be just as disappointed, if not more so, than John the Baptizer was in Matthew 11. Or is it the Jesus we're longing for, the Jesus our lives as well as our lips confess is coming again to judge the living and the dead, the Jesus whom John's followers were told about?
That's the only Christ there is. That Jesus -- his humble service to the poor, the outcast, and the sinner, his willingness to eat with Pharisees as well as tax collectors and prostitutes, and most of all, his willingness to die on a Roman cross rather than retaliate against those who treated him and his people brutally -- is the judge of the nations, God's final answer to the question of what humanity, at its worst or its best, really deserves, in God's reckoning, in God's time. the extent to which I can finally embrace that truth, the extent to which I can receive others with the kind of generosity with which Jesus received those who came to him, is the extent to which I can understand just how boundless God's generosity, forgiveness, and love are toward someone like me."
What is the salvific scandal in your own life this Advent, or in the life of your congregation? Where is God breaking into the wilderness? What expectations have been thwarted, and what is breaking in through the ruins? Apart from where you thought it would be, where ARE the blind seeing, the lame skipping, the deaf hearing, in your own life and in that of your communities and families?
