Letters for the Road: December 2020

Preparation, Judgment, and John the Baptist

Dear reader, 

I'm not sure that there's a Christmas tradition that I can say I've kept well this year. Our advent calendar hangs with its pockets empty—I didn't get past the decision-making of whether to fill the pockets with Scriptures to read, or acts of kindness to do, or something new for this year. The holiday baking has been put off again, I’ve had to remind myself to turn on Christmas music, and when I do pull up my music app, I’m at a loss for what to play. The popular, bright carols don’t seem to fit this year—or this hemisphere—but I don’t know traditional advent carols well enough for them to be able to put me in the holiday spirit, as they say. 

This season has been one of thorough unpreparedness, of finding myself in the crosshairs of busyness, seasonal disorientation, and exhaustion after a difficult year. Given this, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the Advent figure most on my mind is John the Baptist. “Prepare!” is his cry from the wilderness. 

I’ve been helped here by Fleming Rutledge’s collection of sermons, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Another more recent Advent habit that I’ve kept (and also kept badly this year) has been to read several of her sermons each week. In contrast to the peace, joy, and hope that fill most Advent devotionals, Rutledge reminds us that, given the orientation of Advent not only to Christ’s first coming but also to his second, the theme of judgment occupies a significant place in this season. She’s also reminding me of John the Baptist, that terrifying figure who stands at the entrance to the Gospels, and whom we try to move past as quickly as possible. 

What a strange, unearthly figure. I wonder if any of us would have felt comfortable in his presence, or if we would have cited allergies to his hairy garments as a reasonable excuse for avoidance. 

John’s task was to prepare the way for the Messiah, but he didn’t do so with the declarations of peace and praise that the angels gave at Jesus’ birth. Instead, he comes pronouncing judgment—a roundly unpopular declaration at any time of history. At least, for those on the receiving end. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees,” John warned. “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9). 

Perhaps, after such a year, we want to resist any more declarations of judgment. Perhaps we’ve had quite enough of the passionate accusations from those who disagree with us. Our news feeds have been filled with enough of that—do we need anyone else to point the finger at us and cry “woe!”?

Of course, as Rutledge reminds us, the judgment that is coming does not come from the clouded perception and skewed justice of people—ourselves included. Instead, she says, “The line runs through each of us.” Any easy line of judgment between “us” and “them” obscures our shared humanity and our shared condemnation in Adam. The ease with which we forget this, instead drawing the line between us and our enemies, whether theological, ethnic, political, or otherwise, is the reason we need the practice of confession—declaring “I have sinned” both as a response to and an invitation for the piercing of the Spirit’s conviction. This is the repentance John the Baptist calls for as he prepares the way for Jesus. 

And yet, Rutledge observes that immediately after the command to prepare, given first by Isaiah and then John, we are told that it is the Lord himself who will prepare, making the valleys and mountains level, the crooked and rough straight and smooth (Isaiah 40:3-5; Luke 3:4-6). God’s working on our behalf, to do and work in us that which he has commanded, is consonant with the whole biblical story—it is, in fact, the work of God-become-man in Jesus Christ. 

What relief. To know that God’s coming is not dependent on my readiness. To know that it is exactly to ill-prepared and blind people that God breaks in with the light of Jesus Christ. 

What mercy—what deep and rich and wise mercy, to fall back into. To take the small cracks of conviction in our hearts to Jesus and plead with him to break us open, so that we might see our sin in order to repent. To take the very little oil that we have, to bring it to Jesus and admit that our hearts and lives are not as ready as they ought to be. To confess the turmoil, anxiety, distraction, arrogance—oh, and so much more—that has grown in our hearts this year. 

Who among us is not longing for this mercy?

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Nativity, by Elimo Njau. I’m fascinated by the way artists from cultures all over the world have represented the nativity in their own cultural context. I wonder, how do we claim Jesus as saviour for our culture without making that claim exclusive? Does the particularity of God-made-man— the messiah come as a poor, Jewish boy born in a specific place and time—constrain our artistic representational efforts, or does the universality of his salvation break those constraints? Regardless of the answer to these questions, the works of art in this selection remind me that Immanuel is God-with-all-humanity, not simply the “us” that I most closely associate with, and that the good news that the angels proclaimed is good news for the whole world. 

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My reading has slowed significantly over the past month, but I’ve been refreshed by a couple of gems. The first is a book that will be more of a devotional companion than one that I complete and put aside: Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey, illustrated with woodcut prints by Ned Bustard. I’m very close to declaring that you need this book. McKelvey has written liturgies for the usual times we would think to pray (morning, midday, evening; sickness, death, new life) and for times that prayer may be far from our minds (“for those flooded with too much information,” “for the paying of bills,” “for those experiencing road rage,” “for those who sleep in tents.” I haven’t worked my way through many of these yet, but just reading the titles of these prayers reminds me that every situation I find myself in is an opportunity to pray. And from those I have read so far, these prayers offer not only the words to respond to difficult and joyful situations, but also a perspective that will help shape my heart in true ways. 

I’ve also just finished reading Rodney Clapp’s Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for Humans, not Angels. Clapp’s book surprised me in its coverage—from the Eucharist to Elvis to Bambi, I did not expect it to be what it was. But it was nevertheless a wonderful read, thought-provoking, gracious and celebratory in all the right ways. 

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From Dependence: “To give an honest accounting of ourselves, we must begin with our weakness and fragility. We cannot structure our politics or our society to serve a totally independent, autonomous person who never has and never will exist. Repeating that lie will leave us bereft: first, of sympathy from our friends when our physical weakness breaks the implicit promise that no one can keep, and second, of hope, when our moral weakness should lead us, like the prodigal, to rush back into the arms of the Father who remains faithful. Our present politics can only be challenged by an illiberalism that cherishes the weak and centers its policies on their needs and dignity.”

From Small Apocalypses: “Let us wake up to ways the world ends every day, responding with compassion when we encounter others going through one slow-motion apocalypse or another. But let us also not turn a blind eye to the grace-filled apocalypses of first steps, surprising kindnesses, and new possibilities. Just because a baby, for example, is a small and ordinary being doesn’t mean she is not also an apocalyptic prophet, tearing with tiny hands at the veil that keeps us looking only at what is and not at what ought to be.”

From Hurricanes and Soft Totalitarianism: “But nobody is preventing us from doing what we know to be good. As Leo Strauss wrote in his essay about liberal education: ‘We cannot forget the obvious fact that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence. No one prevents us from cultivating our garden or from setting up outposts which may come to be regarded by many citizens as salutary to the republic and as deserving of giving to it its tone.’ And it will probably benefit us most of all to think of doing this daily work of maintenance and preservation instead of allowing ourselves the pleasure of anger, or thinking that we must have a hurricane to focus our minds and steel our hearts against those who are not our friends.”

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Gingerbread is quintessentially Christmas, but I hate making gingerbread cut-out cookies. Sugar cookie cut-outs are much better, but by the time I finish those I have no desire to start all over with a different—and more difficult to work—dough. If you’re of the same mind, you might also agree with me that these molasses spice cookies are a much better choice. 

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More of my writing from this past month: a meditation on Thanksgiving, a review of Sandra Richter’s Stewards of Eden, and a piece for Velvet Ashes on the significance of traditions and the grief that comes with giving them up. 

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O Lord, you who tell us to keep watch for your coming, open my eyes and ears to see and to hear what I cannot see and hear on my own—signs of your gracious presence around me—so that I might not remain blind and deaf to the evidence of your tangible care for me this day. Amen.

by  W. David O. Taylor

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On the road with you, 

Laura 

P.S. I’d love to hear from you! You can leave a comment below or reply privately to laura@thecerbuses.com.