Advent Reflection #10, The What of Advent: Faith

In my daily reading I have come to Isaiah 53.  To modern Christians that seems obviously about Jesus Christ.  To those of his generation, it took great faith to see it.  We are so immersed in a Christian interpretation of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible prophecies that we can’t see them as anything but directly relating to Christ, but it took a great leap of faith, imagination, and understanding for his contemporaries to do so.

The other evening I went to a concert at our college.  The performers were an adult choir that sings sacred music, mostly in churches, mostly in liturgical ones.  They did a wonderful job, and their music was God-honoring and well performed.  I enjoyed it, and the leader was smart enough to have us stand and sing at two points.  But one student wouldn’t stand and sing.  I imagine he was protesting that at a secular college such sectarian music was being played and that he was expected to participate in something he didn’t believe in.

I take two views of this. I think he was honest, probably more honest than some of the others in the building.  He wasn’t going to profess something he didn’t believe in, and he staged a “sit-in.”  For that, I admire him, a bit at least.  I always admire personal honesty. On the other hand, he could have read the program ahead of time and known what he was coming to; unfortunately, it might have been a class requirement.  I mean, come on, it’s Advent; where do people think Advent comes from.

The other part of me says he was a spoiled and rebellious young man who was trying to get attention and/or was too lazy to get off his butt.  He could have stood out of respect and still not sung.  I am not particularly proud of that part of me, but now I am being personally honest.

So, back to faith.  Faith is part honesty, part imagination, part “coming to the end of oneself in dependency,” part need-fulfillment, and part enculturation/learning/knowledge.  We must know something to believe it. 

Advent tests our faith.  How?  I am writing these posts despite a litany of work to do, a list so long that I am starting to feel physical symptoms and spent last night tossing and turning in pain and didn’t fall asleep until after 4:30.  But I have faith that someone will read them and be blessed.  How?  By reminding us that it has been 2000 years, almost, since Jesus said he would return for the second advent.  How?  By asking us to believe a fairly improbable and yet humanly told story, of a virgin birth (the rest is not too hard to believe, just the conception without sex part).  By asking us to stop our insane lives and spend time on something ultimately more important, worship of a God who became flesh and dwelt among us.