G is for
Glad
Aha, notice the switch. Suddenly we are asking, Why did Christ come so early? Here, all along, we had been asking the opposite, Why did he come so late? Now we are asking instead, If Old Time is going to end anyway, all too soon, why did Christ have to come and end it even sooner -- ahead of time? Why? Answer: to give us an option. The old option, until Christ the only option, is to wait for The Endtime and take our chances. The new option is not to wait but rather to face The Endtime prematurely and hope to preempt it. One option is to go on living our lives as we have, falling farther and farther behind in our obligations, in hopes that when The Endtime comes we may just have enough credit left to impress The Creditor. The other option is not to go it alone but instead to go through The Endtime with Christ, when he did, ahead of time. One option is to temporize and wish for the best. The other option is to anticipate, risking everything, even blasphemy, going for broke, with only Jesus and his promises to go on. Neither option is without enormous risk. On the one hand, if you try to "save your life you will lose it." But the other option, Jesus' way, while it promises to "save your life," requires first of all that you lose it. Neither option is a no-lose situation. And let's face it, rationally calculated, Jesus could turn out in The End to be wrong. Either way, you die. But now at least you have options as to how to die: permanently or, as we dare to confess, transitionally.
In one of Seminex' advent hymn-sings at Christ Church Cathedral a few years ago, there was this line in the sermon, "If you like bunjee-jumping you'll love Advent" -- advent as in adventure. But beyond the risk is the come-on to take the risk, the lure of the promise: here in dying with Christ is where Old Time comes to its end way ahead of schedule. And what else but that have we been doing in our baptisms and every day since?
How to find words to describe this wonder of the New Time, Jesus' ending of Old Time ahead of time, prior to its own appointed end? The wonder, being so new, defies old language. The best analogies for that wonder, I find, are from the tough slang we hear on the streets and at the edges of polite society. Thus we might say, in the lingo of the boxer, that Jesus beat Endtime to the punch or, like a gun-slinger, he beat Endtime to the draw or, like a wrestler, he got the jump on it, or, like outlaws in a Western, he headed Endtime off at the pass, or, like a reporter, he scooped it. The point in these analogies is not the machismo they exude. That part is directly belied by Jesus as the Isaianic Suffering Servant, whose preeminent virtue is not bravado, not even bravery, but humility.
However, what these earthy analogies do convey is the element of foiling an adversary with a preemptive strike. And remember in this case who the adversary is: Old Time under the Law. Do you mean the very Law of God? Yes. But doesn't that put God's Son in an adversarial relation with God's, the same God's, own old order? Evidently so. What chutzpah! But why would Jesus risk that? Why? For now the mother's answer to the little girl is enough: But aren't you glad he did? Still, that would require the audacity either of a fool or of a child. Exactly. And as Paul said of Jesus' believers, we too are both of those things: children and fools, for following Jesus. But aren't you glad?
robert w bertram
