The second Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of prophets. The way-pavers appear, principally John the Baptist. Prophets are odd characters, but the prophets appear to prepare us, to help us to imagine. The theologian Walter Brueggemann has said that prophets prepare us because they can imagine their world differently in the light of the tradition of their faith. Prophets hold imagination and the tradition together. Prophets seek to make the world anew.
“Prepare the way of the Lord,” the wilderness voice proclaims. “Make the paths straight.” There is, for John, a connection between preparation and repentance. Mark tells us, John came to bring a baptism of repentance.
Theology in an Unexpected Place
I’ve been thinking about the mechanics of forgiveness and prophecy in part because I recently heard a theological word used in an unexpected place. I was listening to an interview with the sociologist and author Matthew Desmond. His latest book, “Poverty by America” looks at the causes of poverty in our country. Desmond looks at the ways we are all connected to systems which create poverty.
In the interview, Desmond acknowledged how deeply rooted the problem of poverty has become in our country. Then he used the theological word. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me, because I knew the scholar is a preacher’s kid, but still, when he said what he said, it took my breath away. Here’s the quote: “[there] is this continued tendency to absolve ourselves through hopelessness.” Matthew Desmond believes we try to absolve ourselves through hopelessness.
When we look at the statistics, even more so when we are faced with the stories of those who are living in poverty, we can move to a hopeless place. We can say, “but Congress,” or the “Welfare State!” or “the housing market.” We can point to powers which feel bigger than us and say, “political gridlock.” We can think, there’s nothing we can do. That kind of hopelessness, Desmond says, we use to try and wash our hands of the suffering. If we don’t have hope, we can stay disconnected. We can walk away and go about our lives. We can pretend God doesn’t have anything to say.
I didn’t expect to hear about absolution from a poverty researcher. That is the kind of word that normally belongs only to people like me, JP, and Mandy. It’s a church word, a clergy word. Absolution is what we priests pronounce after we have confessed our sins, after we have admitted those things we have done and left undone. Absolution means we have resolved to do better. Absolution is a word of hope. Absolution says, despite our failures, God invites us to better, to know within ourselves and make known in our communities the good news of Christ’s love.
Matthew Desmond took my church word out beyond the church walls, and he got me thinking about all the ways I use hopelessness, all the times I metaphorically throw up my hands and say, “what can you do?” instead of really asking question, “no, what can I do?” Desmond got me wondering how often we use hopelessness as a way to assuage our sense of disconnection, our failure to imagine a new world, a safer world, a more just world, a more welcoming world for our neighbors.
If Advent is about Anything it is about Hope
“Prepare the way of the Lord,” John the Baptist comes to say. If Advent is about anything, it is about hope, hope that the God’s way is better than ours. What if our greatest sin, the way we miss the mark, isn’t about sex or pride, or vanity. What if the way we most regularly miss the mark is through our cynicism, our hopelessness?
In Spanish there is no distinction between the word wait and the word hope. There is just one word, “esperar.” Hope isn’t just a feeling. Hope can be a discipline. Matthew Desmond says for the poor, “your hopelessness is useless.” How then can we practice something more useful? How can we practice hope?
Let me mention just one way this community puts hope into practice.
This week I got to ride along with our Las Familias team. Once a month a group from St. Michael’s gathers in the early morning hours to drive South to El Paso. This month the volunteers were carrying four SUVs full of donated coats and warm clothes that were headed to three different migrant shelters on the US/Mexico border. Thank you to all who donated.
In the last shelter we visited, Casa Papa Francisco, a group of longtime volunteers, all Catholic laywomen, invited us to reflect together. They told the stories of some of the residents of this particular shelter, which specializes in those who need longer term care. In residence were a 25-year-old woman with stage four cancer, fighting for her life. The cancer is terminal, but she has a young kid, and they are buying time for her mother’s humanitarian visa to be approved so she can come from Venezuela and care for her grandchild.
We also briefly met a young man who had been injured in the fire at an immigrant detention center in Juarez earlier this year. Forty people died in the fire, which was set by migrants to protest the inhumane conditions inside. This man will live with physical disability for the rest of his life. He’s had to learn to speak again after smoke inhalation damaged his brain. He smiled broadly and waved as he loaded into the van to physical therapy.
With our hosts, we got talking about recent proposals to fix our broken immigration system. Some other volunteers were away in Washington to lobby for reforms. I said I didn’t imagine Congress was actually going to act. I don’t think the political climate is hopeful. I caught myself, again trying to absolve myself with hopelessness. I said quickly, “of course I still have to have hope.” One of the longtime volunteers, a woman named Carol, wouldn’t let me off the hook that easily. She asked, “Mike, tell me, why do you have hope?” I was quiet for a long moment.
Eventually I asked, “have you heard of the theologian Barbara Holmes?” She is a teacher with the Center for Action and Contemplation here in Albuquerque. I shouldn’t have been surprised when they all nodded. In her latest book “Crisis Contemplation,” Barbara Holmes has this line, “Despite all evidence to the contrary, I insist on seeing our current state of affairs as the rupture of one state of being that will prepare us for another reality.” I’m giving you the full quote. There at Papa Francisco, I paraphrased. Despite all the suffering we see, all the intransigence, all the hopelessness, we have to hope. We have to look for signs that a new world is in the business of being born. We have to prepare the way. Our faith teaches us to look for hope among the rubble.
We started talking together about the hope we see in the migrants we meet. Despite the circumstances, despite the suffering, despite the difficulty, abuse, and pain they face, they carry so much hope.
Finding Hope among the Migrants
Here at St. Michael’s at our Landing ministry, I see it all the time. Since I’ve arrived every one of the guests I’ve met at the Landing has been a young man released from an immigrant detention center here in New Mexico. Most have been stuck in these prisons for weeks, even months. They’ve been malnourished and ill-treated by guards. Then they arrive at the church and volunteers smile at them, offer hugs and warm home-cooked meals. They work together on puzzles and get a shower and fresh clothes. I sometimes get asked to pray with the guests for safety on the next steps of their journey. They grip my hands so tight while we pray. They say, “primero Dios,” and I feel just a taste of of the hope that has carried them all the way from Venezuela, El Salvador, or Peru.
The ministries with migrants at St. Michael’s have helped me to practice hope. The people with whom we minister have helped me lift my head and see beyond the limits of my own little life. Prophetic hope invites us to stand in the faithful gap between our Christian tradition and a new world we can only yet imagine. That’s why the prophets show up. Prophets help us connect to the roots of our faith so that we can uproot the injustices in our world. So that we can be part of reshaping our society to be more loving, more welcoming, more like the world God hopes for us. The prophets come this second Sunday of Advent to help us prepare.
So as we go about these last weeks before Christmas, What if this season before Christmas was about more, more than getting the right gifts wrapped under the tree, or off in the mail? What if this season helped us learn to let go of our useless hopelessness? What if, this Advent, we resolved to be part of the prophetic work, of making the path just a little bit easier for our neighbors?
Amen.
Mike Angell 