David Bunce's blog

Time is short in the busyness of life. As I write this, there are several other things I probably should be doing: learning Russian vocabulary, doing some more on the seemingly endless list of preparations for St Andrews Unwrapped, getting to grips with German grammar. And above all, I definitely should be sleeping. It doesn’t make sense for me to be sitting writing a blog. Yet perhaps that is partly what Advent is about. It doesn’t seem to make sense. In the middle of a chaotic and busy time leading up to Christmas, we have this time set apart to be still and reflect. To imagine and explore. An invitation to step outside the busyness and routine of ‘what is’ – and to instead see what could be. It’s a time to take the still, deep breaths of dangerous contemplation and learn to see the world anew – not as it seems to us but as God sees it: pregnant with hope and expectation and possibility.

We seem to have a general recognition that the world is not how it could or should be. Maybe this recognition has grown slightly over the last few years with the rise of mass terrorism, with the fears about economic or climatic turmoil and with a growing uncertainty about the future. Far from being a simple mental categorisation, evil seems to be something we can put pictures to – the genocide in Darfur. The subjugation and dehumanising treatement of one people group by another in so many parts of the world. The fractions and frictions that are in our smaller communities and relationships. The way we live out of balance with the world around us, exploiting its resources and failing to care for what we have been given. All these things seem to point to a feeling that the world – including, if we’re honest, our own lives much of the time – are not as they should be. It’s an awareness of the brokenness of the world.

Yet at the same time, there are also glimpses of hope – in the community that refuses to be split along ethnic lines. In the enemies who refuse to continue fighting along the same old lines but begin to seek some form of peace and reconciliation. In the ever growing number of communities who choose consciously to try and live a sustainable and ethical lifestyle.

Such things seem to resonate with us not just because they are miracles by themselves, but because they seem to point beyond themselves towards something bigger. Better. It’s as if in the pain, the brokenness of the world does not always have the last say.

This seems to be a good context in which to begin to approach the gospel. Far from being the safe, sanitised guide to getting individually saved that we so often seem to make it, the gospel seems to be something which steps into the awareness of the duality of the brokenness and the beauty of the world, offering a dangerous, subversive hope that it will be beauty that wins in the end.

Paul in his letter to the Romans talks the gospel as Jesus being Lord. Jesus himself talks about the Kingdom of God being very near. There is this sense that in Jesus, the Creator God is stepping into a fragile and broken world to do something new. Something beautiful. Maybe that’s what we all feel stir deep inside when we are captivated by something kind or beautiful or just. It’s the taste of Creation being healed.

The wonder and the senselessness of Advent is found in taking time to stop and see this happening here and now. One of the most poignant Advent Bible passages for me comes from one of the Psalms, Psalm 85, where the Psalmist pictures salvation as being a project involving both heaven and earth, with the earth responding to what God has already done. The poet paints a picture where “steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other”.

Perhaps this is what we see each time everyone someone refuses to accept the injustice and brokenness of the status quo.

Each time someone becomes frustrated with shallow relationships but instead tries to live in a way that invites depth and vulnerability and sacrifice.

Each time some refuses to accept the charicature of a people group but choses the fragileness and unpredictability of love.

Each time someone in a conflict situation refuses to believe that it has to always be this way – but instead has the hope that a new and different future is possible.

In these situations and countless more besides, we see the glimpses not only of a future beauty and a healed creation but of the topsy turvy nature of God’s Kingdom here and now. A Kingdom that Jesus talks about in the Beatitudes, where all the loosers, the nobodies, the not-good-enoughs are welcome and valued and accepted. A kingdom which seems to welcome everyone – those working hard for peace and justice. Those who are facing hard times, for who every new day is a struggle. Those who feel amazing one day – and totally rubbish the next. Those who go from day to day bearing the strain of the pain of a loved one.

All these people Jesus puts in God’s Kingdom

Accepted. Love. Valued.

Not because of any merit of popularity or wealth or attractiveness but because of God stepping into the world in a self-giving, totally sacrificial way in order to allow the healing and possibility of what could be to flow into the present, to subvert it, to heal it and to spread the hope of final and complete healing because of the mystery of the Cross.

God’s Kingdom. The gospel. Good News. That is what seems to be at the heart of the Advent story.

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