December 12, Third Sunday In Advent
Isaiah 12:2-6; Zephaniah 3:14-18a; Philippians 4:4-9; Luke 3:7-18
The words of John the Baptist conveyed to us in the third chapter of Luke qualify him to be in the company of Isaiah and Zephaniah and Paul, all wonderful and much needed scourges. Advent, however, brings encouragement even to our sternest, most uncompromising critics. They turn sanguine--God's mercy upon them and, one surely hopes, the rest of us.
As we read these confident, reassuring passages in this Christmas season, we had best remember whose voices are coming our way. Not the voices of glib optimists, anxious to promise pie-in-the-sky to anyone and everyone. Not the voices of healers at all costs, determined to assuage anxiety wherever it appears, banish all evidence of fear and worry and guilt. These are, rather, individuals who forever (and with great passion, conviction, eloquence) scolded all in sight. These were teachers and preachers who had no interest in currying the favor of their students, their listeners; rather, the point was to explain in no uncertain terms one's outrage, one's sense of horror, one's disgust. When such human beings suddenly become entranced with confident expectation, a minor miracle seems at hand--a prelude, of course, to that major miracle of all time: the Word become flesh.
Too often today our secular experts, the people we (alas) are inclined to heed, have scant interest in condemnation, in moral censure. On the contrary, we are told we ought not be afraid or anxious; certainly we ought rid ourselves of guilt, which I keep hearing in one psychiatric conference after another is "self-destructive" or "causes symptoms."
Some of my students, being friendly, whimsical, ironic, make fun of our prevailing culture (and me in it) by calling a course I teach "Guilt 33." They mean that the writers we read (Agee and Orwell, Simone Weil and Georges Bernanos, Dorothy Day and Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy and Ralph Ellison and Tillie Olsen) seem to be, often enough, harsh on all of us: willing to chastise us, scorn us, be horrified at what we've done, what we've allowed to happen.
"There is an accusatory streak to the writers we are asked to study in this course," one bright Californian announced to me during my office hours. I said yes, I certainly agreed. Then he posed his confusion this way: "How can you as a psychiatrist recommend all this--a guilt trip?"
I was wishing, then, that I could summon the wrath and ire, the utter displeasure and vexation of spirit one finds in Isaiah or Paul. Instead I contented myself with a wonderful observation of Erik H. Erikson in the epilogue to Childhood and Society, in which as he lists the desirable qualities of a psychoanalyst, he refers to "judicious indignation, without which a cure is but a straw in the wind of history."
A secular god had been quoted. Silence overcame us. Then a moment of grace, I dare think, with this comment by my young visitor: "I guess you can't only soothe people; you have to warn them, too." Yes, we agreed; and you can't, credibly, be told of good and bright prospects day after day, in the face of this world's continuing inequities, indecencies, outright and numerous evils. Isaiah craved the grace we all do, even as he never stopped noticing and denouncing the devilish aspects of this life.
December 19, Fourth Sunday In Advent
Psalm 80:1-7; Micah 5:l-5a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-49
When I was in college I studied with Perry Miller, who paid close attention to the Puritan divines and became a wonderfully talented and eloquent mediator between them (and their 18th-century lives) and the rest of us, slouching toward Bethlehem, we hope, during the 20th century.
The anonymous letter to the Hebrews was one of Miller's favorites--not surprisingly I now realize, given his strong and lasting interest in the complex, argumentative side of Christian theology. Miller, however, never turned into a pedant; there was a lively, sensual side to his intellect, and indeed, to his person. He truly savored certain passages in Hebrews, such as the opening lines as offered us in the King James version of the Bible: "God, who at sundry times and in divers moments spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these days spoken unto us by His Son...." And I still remember some rather intense (maybe somewhat self-important or prideful) discussions we all had in a certain seminar-- "issues" we kept on saying (as I fear intellectuals are wont to say) "in the Epistle to the Hebrews."
No question, one matter to which we tried to give some thought appears in the 10th chapter: the difference between the old law and the new law. Christ's sacrifice was not yet another offering in a long tradition, Christ's sacrifice was not self-serving, not placating, not ritualistic. His sacrifice was, it seems, connected to his very incarnation. His sacrifice, too, was an act of obedience: "Lo, I have come to do the will of God." Such a subordination of self to God is, one has to say, especially instructive these days, when for all too many of us self is God.
Hebrews was meant for all time, and it dares examine, directly and indirectly, the greatest of mysteries--God's intentions, and of course his Son's. As I read Hebrews again, and in connection with it, the 80th Psalm, I kept thinking of Karl Barth's willingness in our century to think of God's search as well as ours, God's interests and dispositions as opposed to those belonging to ourselves, the usual subject of our constant inquiry.
In that psalm the Jews sought from God a change of heart; and in Hebrews we are reminded that God prepared for Jesus a body, and then asked that such a body, belonging to him, be sacrificed on the cross--as if, once and for all, the question of God's relationship to suffering humanity was to be settled.
The center of Christian faith is here upon us, as well as the mystery of it: God's inscrutable purposes, God's inscrutable decision to join us, God's radical life among us, God's astounding willingness to leave us under the notorious circumstances of Good Friday, and lo, God's return in glory.
When this article appeared, Robert Coles was professor of psychiatry and medical humanities at Harvard University and the writer of more than 30 books, including the five-volume Children of Crisis. His first two Advent meditations appeared in the November 1982 issue.
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