Thread by @nc_clair

So it’s #Advent (a thread)....

I’m one of those people who like to remind everyone that Advent isn’t just a warm up for Christmas. I love how Advent helps frame the “in between” character of our lives.

And sometimes #Advent needs to draw our focus forward to the “not yet” that is signaled in the idea of Jesus coming again. Again, another framework to navigate the lived realities/dynamics of our lives. 2/x

But this year, I’m really leaning into the idea of #Advent leading me to Christmas, leading me to a grounding memory. Technical liturgical/theological language calls this “Anamnesis”. We bring memory into our present, to bring that reality into our present. 3/x

Also, I’m having to think ahead on my Sunday morning sermons for #Advent and Christmas, the things I’m going to talk about. So there’s that too. 4/x

So...as I remember the grounding memory...the first #Advent (arrival) of Jesus...I’ve been talking with some people about the classic story in Luke 2:1-7. 5/x

Everyone is going to their home towns for a census. Joseph brings preggers Mary. And they delivers the baby, lays in the manger, no room “in the inn”, etc etc. 6/x

Better translations render help us see that “the inn” is really the guest room at the relatives house. So, NO, the mean manager at the local Marriott didn’t send them out to a stable in the back. It’s way worse... 7/x

This isn’t just about logistics...like all the other cousins beat you to the house for the census, so you don’t get the guest room or the air mattress in the living room. 8/x

Homes were often hewed from stone, or built attached/near a cave, and domestic animals were kept there. The manger could be a small depression in the floor of the living area that passes through to the ”stable”. 9/x

So what I’m saying is that Mary and Joseph were basically told to go sleep in the garage. It wasn’t just inconvenient, it was humiliating. 10/x

It’s likely that Joseph’s relatives were ashamed of his choice to stick with this woman, who got ”knocked up” and had the gall to claim God did it. 11/x

It’s likely that they didn’t want “that woman” there, and were frustrated with Joseph too. “Why did you bring her? Why Are you still with her?” 12/x

So imagine a woman giving birth, in all its risk to life, difficulties, vulnerability and exposure. But now in a situation full of shame, hostility, and disregard! Even today, Black women can likely identify with this. 13/x

Mary survives...and I can only imagine her and Joseph on that First #Advent sitting on an old cot in the little workshop bump out of the garage...14/x

Can you imagine what could have been going through their heads, what they were feeling? 15/x

”God, you made promises. You blew up my life. You asked Joseph to voluntarily blow up his. And now I’m in his butt face uncle’s garage with a baby with bits of dried blood and afterbirth stuck to him, a poopy diaper, and screaming for my breast. WHERE ARE YOU?!” 16/x

And all ya’ll thought this Thanksgiving was hard cuz you had to spend 4-5 hours with your racist in-laws? 17/x

In the first #Advent we see a God who “gets it”. Where is that God? The Divine Community of Love is 2 feet in front of Mary and Joseph’s face. In a manger. Complicating an already complicated situation. Messy. Pooping. Hungry. Just like us. 18/x

We get super uncomfortable with this. Especially in white #evangelical spaces. Stable was inconvenient, but “at least they were together as a family”. We want to affirm our middle class notions of family, and leverage the scene so people welcome the baby into their hearts.19/x

We have a hard time fully embracing the embodiment of God, because this is where a real “political theology” can begin. If we admit the full implications of the first #Advent it means that our current loyalties will be dismantled. 20/x

Why? Because if exact image of God, the radiance of God’s being, is found in Jesus...the Jesus unwelcome, messy, dependent, weak...if God is mediated to us there...then somehow we must admit God is mediated in every unwelcome child born in dereliction. 21/x

Some Neo-Reformed types go on and on and on about how the Cross is the only basis for their political theology, especially to stand against racism, but they’re wrong. It’s the dereliction of the Incarnation that can account for an embodied life, now shared by God. 22/x

I would dare say the Cross, with all the terrible magnitude of its desolation, is MERELY the logical outworking of a the disaffection and estrangement of Incarnation. Not trying to diminish the Cross, but show you the monumentality of that which is Ultimate taking on flesh. 23/x

This why our Eastern Orthodox siblings tend to emphasize Nativity as Salvation. Think of the lovely choral work by Chesnokov: Salvation is Created. 24/x

The first #Advent shows us that God doesn’t traffic in philosophical abstractions or First Principles. God deals with the actual impact of life as it is lived, and has demonstrated that embodied life is God’s priority. 25/x

HOW God appears in the first #Advent matters as much, if not more, than any other theory about WHAT Jesus is doing. If you’re looking for the WHAT, then open your eyes and look at the HOW. 26/x

And if we start to grasp the deeply complicated, painful, awkward, terrible reality of what that first #Advent shows us about God, we aren’t going to be able to say with a straight face that we can faithfully follow Christ and parse the relative value of the human beings. 27/x

Because of first #Advent, all those made unwelcome by abstract principles of human law now reveal Emmanuel. And their appearing indicts the oppressor. The slum is the dwelling place of God. The woman who locks herself in the bathroom, weeping and hiding from her abuser too. 28/x

What the grounding memory of the first #Advent brings into the now gives us hope in the “in between”, in our cries for help, our anger at injustice, and assures us that the lives we live in our bodies is not a life of atomized disconnected expressive individualism. 29/x

The first #Advent insists that now all of life is lived in God. For God, who has always filled it, has now filled it, indelibly and intelligibly. And you are never alone.

Just look around. Look at the person who loves you, shares life with you. 30/x

Each one of us is the continuation of embodiment. Fully, finally, and irreversibly affirmed and vindicated by God. 31/x

This has massive implications for EVERYTHING!
And it’s the basis for any possibility for us to fully experience those words we throw around so easily during this season: Hope, Peace, Joy, Love, Freedom. 32/x

it’s by starting with Incarnation, with the first #Advent, that we can free ourselves from the moralism, control, shame that always sneaks in the backdoor when we reduce Jesus appearing in the flesh to some pragmatic move by God so he can get a body on a cross. 33/x

#Advent means we’re not alone, and the shadows aren’t filled with monsters. It means God is a real as real can get. And Love is always right in front of you. Especially when it’s hard to see. 34/x

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