Why Advent Should Be About Ending the World as We Know It
By: Joel Nihlean
Tags: Anti Capitalism, Christianity, Black Live Matter, Advent, Activism

Advent is a reminder that God has not abandoned the world.

God continues working in the world, and so should we. For, with Advent, we know the world can be made better. In fact, it must be remade, recreated, rebuilt, redeemed. It is God’s work, but our hands that must do the labor.

We know we’ve failed at that. The good news is that we are freed by grace to try again. To fail again. To fail better. To fail until we succeed.

Advent is often articulated as a season of progress, unity and peace. I don’t want “failing better” to be mistaken for incrementalism. The idea of a perfecting progress is dangerous. Placing hope in gradual reform allows us to tolerate injustices in the world, because things “are getting better all the time” or “the next generation will really tackle it, they’re so great.”

What if, instead of imagining that the moral arc of the universe to be long, but bending toward justice, we acknowledged that it only bends when we put weight on it. We are called to grab that arc from the status quo and pull the arc hard in the right direction.

What if, instead of reforms that make the world a little more tolerable, Advent prioritized the destruction of the old world so that another world could actually be built. Sometimes pulling hard on that arc will cause it to break. Call it a creative destruction.

There cannot be unity in Christ if some are oppressed and others are oppressors.

But that is going to require us to do something I know many of you are uncomfortable with: Politics. Not the traditional Left, Right, Red Team, Blue Team politics. I’m talking about the art of describing a better world, and working to make it a reality; the radical politics of expanding the horizons of the possible through both advocacy and activism.

Refusing to engage in the politics of public life is to support our broken world as good enough for you. It’s to turn your back on your neighbor. Neutrality is not only impossible, it is immoral. Our Advent theology demands that we take a side, and not just rhetorically.

It is not enough to talk about the liberative power of Christ’s love in the abstract or the personal. That’s still neutrality. Talk of unity or moralizing critiques without action still put us on the same side as the oppressor against the oppressed.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

There cannot be unity in Christ if some are oppressed and others are oppressors. In fact, I don’t believe Jesus would even recognize a distinction between faith and politics in the way some in the church want today.

There’s a strain of thought in Christianity that says radical politics doesn’t belong in our church or our theology. We don’t need it in our sermons, or anywhere in our pews. That’s a strain of thought that wants us to believe that, not unlike Pilot, that if we refuse to openly support either side, our hands can be washed clean.

The final chapter of Dear Church is a call to revolution. Rev. Duncan calls for a revolution in Gospel tradition much like the one that earned Jesus a charge of sedition.

“Right now, the world needs more Jesus people than it needs church people. If our gathered communities focus only on propping up the institution of church, all we will accomplish is propping up the failing infrastructure of empire. If we applied that same energy toward serving the people outside our church walls, we could be the spark needed to light the flame that burns away the barriers between us and the ever-living God-a God who stands ready to hold us in a warm embrace after generations of weeping for us to be in relationship with God’s own self.”

The unrest, the uprisings, and the rebellions this country has seen in black communities, particularly over the last decade and in the summer of 2020, will continue in the coming years. Where will the ELCA be? Where will Christians be? That is the new world we’re called to imagine, and to see ourselves in, right now.

Revolution doesn’t happen at the ballot box, and it doesn’t come from the long, consensus-building process of an ELCA social statement. Revolution moves the frame of reference for our world without the consent of the status quo.

Revolution happens in the streets — demands shouted, demands spray painted on walls, demands nailed to a church door, a police precinct burned down — and it happens in hearts. Revolution is that turning over tables in the temple energy that is born of love and righteous anger.

Sometimes, loving your neighbor is as easy as opening your front door. More often, it will mean leaving those safe places of privilege to serve.

Be righteously angry at this world. Be motivated to be the change, but remember, church: We are the whitest denomination there is. Don’t descend into marginalized communities like a white savior on a white horse. Rev. Duncan reminds us white folks to go as humble servants.

“Dear Church, you can join these people in the streets. Decenter yourself and follow the lead of people of color already working for justice. Learn about the liberation movements that are springing up everywhere. Show up at a planning meeting and listen. Do some of the grunt work activists do all the time, like handing out flyers or making calls. Adopt an attitude of accompaniment, and just walk alongside these leaders. They don’t need saviors but could use another voice or two. This goes double for pastors. Our deacons are already leading the way.”

As we anticipate the new world to come in Advent and revolution — a world without exploitation or injustice, without unmet needs of food, of medical care, of shelter, of love, of purpose — we also must name the specific systems or ideologies that need to be destroyed.

Advent asks us to see who God is asking us to serve. Advent asks us what God is telling us to disrupt and to destroy. Advent asks us to do away with “the way things are,” to contemplate how power structures, economic systems, relationships, values, and assumptions unjustly shape and order this world. Advent asks us stand with our neighbors and be the love in action that fights injustice.

We must imagine a world without white supremacy, without poverty, without billionaires, without anti-blackness, without racism, without sexism, without economically-induced mental illness, without homelessness, without homophobia, without transphobia, without police, without prisons, without exclusion or exploitation, without capitalism.

The question for you is, how will you work to abolish these things — to end the world as you know it?