In Advent I love the way we embark together - hand in hand as it were - into the darkest time of the year. I love the waiting, the expectation, the trustful, emphatic lighting of yet another candle as each week passes. Some years the darkness feels very safe, full of love and security. We know how the story plays out. We know that there is ultimately a happy ending. But this year, this Advent, the darkness feels to me like it conceals threats, contains danger. I am still committed to the journey but I am uncomfortable, and why wouldn’t I be? Our world burns, in every sense of the word. What is to become of our children and our children’s children?
I was recently in the London Underground and on one of the tubes there was a government poster describing how to recognise sexual harassment on the trains. Someone may stand too close and “accidentally” press against you, if you move away they move slyly after you, and so on. The poster suggests a number of things to do if you are a witness to this. You might consider addressing the perpetrator and letting them know that you have seen them; reporting what is happening if you get off the train before them; standing between the perpetrator and the person being harassed.
I am not certain about this advice. I believe that a more immediately effective course of action if you are witness to a bullying situation is to go and stand with the person being bullied. Ignore the perpetrator – they are of no importance at this point. Check in with the abused person. Give them the regard and the respect. Are you okay? This seems like a scary situation, I’m just standing here so that you are not alone. If you need company leaving, I’m happy to come with you.
Solidarity. This is the way that God seems to operate too. God doesn’t show up to punish the wicked (although sometimes we may wish that he would). He comes, rather, to restore the fragile ones to a hopeful life. On that first Advent, God chose people who were marginalised and insignificant, victims of religious corruption, poverty, imperial bullying. Angels came and spoke their fearful words of peace and comfort to those whose voices were never otherwise heeded - Mary, a young pregnant girl from Nazareth; Elizabeth, the middle-aged wife of a provincial priest; the shepherds in the fields: rough, uneducated, essential workers, but like many essential workers without honour, social standing, influence or prospects. That first Advent God came and stood with the bullied.
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Jesus throughout his ministry on earth plotted a similar path. His way was to stand, sit, eat, drink, talk in solidarity with the despised and the overlooked. These were his tribe, his priority, his friends, the ones he had a heart for. He did occasionally speak truth to power but this was the exception rather than the rule. He showed no interest in the wreaths of empire, or in the ambitious or entitled. He made straight for the neglected margins.
We can take great comfort in this orientation of God. The other night I walked with my family through the freezing streets of my town to a restaurant for a celebration dinner. As we were happily walking, chatting and laughing, we passed a homeless person huddled in a thin sleeping bag in a shop doorway, and then another, a few doors down, curled up against the freezing night, a cardboard box over his head. The contrast was unbearable. These days, over and over, we are chilled to the bone by the unfairness of our world, sometimes on our own actual doorsteps. All I could stumblingly manage to think was: they are the ones who are really God’s darlings.
Our humble, humble God, so much more humble than we are! Our humble God chose to take his place among us in solidarity with the person sleeping in the doorway. If your heart is broken this Advent, for whatever reason, if you are in pain or trouble or distress or despair, know that you are God’s destination, God’s priority, the special focus of his love. You are not alone! You have not been abandoned!
And if you are in a place of warmth and well-being right now, if you are in a place to support others, thanks be to God for that! Christmas reorientates our direction of travel. In the family of God we are called to share each other’s strengths, cover each other’s weaknesses, and carry each other at those times when it all seems too much.