Rethinking Advent

Some years ago, a large poster outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London proclaimed, "Christ Is Coming!" Right below that poster another sign requested, "Please do not obstruct these gates."

Whether it's listening to an Advent sermon, responding during the Eucharist prayer that Christ will come again! or snickering at naïve fundamentalist Left Behind aficionados, the theme of Jesus' second coming is woven through much Christian theology, liturgy, and practice, especially during Advent. Yet most of us give little thought to what we believe about Jesus' returning, perhaps beyond harboring a suspicion that snickering at other Christians, no matter how misguided they may be, is probably unkind.

Generally, thinking about eschatology (the study of end times) divides into four camps. First, there are the alleged literalists. These Christians claim to accept Biblical teachings about the end of history at face value. God's word describes how, perhaps even when, God will bring history to its appointed destiny. Although this approach dominates popular thinking (as evidenced by Left Behind series' bestselling status), a literal reading is anything but simple or straightforward. For almost two millennia, predictions of when Jesus will return have formed a cottage industry among Christians. Literalists also vehemently debate how to understand the Bible's eschatological teachings among themselves – perhaps because few other people are interested!

Second, some Christians argue for a realized eschatology, i.e., Christians experience the future return of Christ (aka his second coming) in the sacraments and sacramentals. This view's popularity perhaps peaked in the first half of the twentieth century. Post-Holocaust theologians have challenged Christians who advocate a realized eschatology to explain how this interpretation provides justice for the victims of radical evil.

The third camp is the most common among Episcopalians. These Christians rarely think about Jesus' returning, mindlessly participate in the liturgy week after week without considering the words that they are saying, and view Advent as the inescapable annual prelude to the all-important, heavily secularized holy day of Christmas. This approach simply ignores the uncomfortable if perhaps incomprehensible Bible passages that may (or not, depending upon one's views) reference the culmination of time and Jesus' return.

The fourth camp consists of Christians who want to remain firmly grounded in science while taking the Biblical witness seriously and acknowledging the critical role of hope for energizing human endeavors. Creation – contrary to what many of us might wish – is dynamic, not static. Change is endemic, pervasive, and inescapable. If you share my belief that God created the cosmos, then we reasonably believe that creation's constant change is indeed evolution, not an unguided series of random events, of which there are certainly a great many, but also evolution, albeit slowly and unevenly, toward a new and better future. Unfortunately, we humans lack both the wisdom and knowledge to discern the specifics of that future, or the process by which it is coming into being. Believing that God is bringing (or luring, in the language of process theology) creation into the future of God's choosing honors the essence of the Biblical witness while recognizing that the Bible's human authors wrote from a very time and culturally bound point of view, using concepts, language, and symbolism appropriate to that context.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote:

Although we too often forget this, what we call evolution develops only in virtue of a certain internal preference for survival (or, if you prefer to put it so, self-survival) which in man takes on a markedly psychic appearance, in the form of a zest for life. Ultimately, it is that and that alone which underlies and supports the whole complex of biophysical energies whose operation, acting experimentally, conditions anthropogenesis.

In view of that fact, what would happen if one day we should see that the universe is so hermetically closed in upon itself that there is no possible way of our emerging from it – either because we are forced indefinitely to go round and round inside it, or (which comes to the same thing) because we are doomed to a total death? Immediately and without further ado, I believe – just like miners who find that the gallery is blocked ahead of them – we would lose the heart to act, and man's impetus would be radically checked and 'deflated' for ever, by this fundamental discouragement and loss of zest. (Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, tr. by René Hague (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 212-213 cited in John B. Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), p. 111)

Advent invites us to affirm and celebrate our zest for life.

The link between Advent and Christmas reminds us that God, working in and through the cosmos, acts in ways consistent with God's revelation in Jesus. Apocalypticists, millenarians, eschatologists, and all of the other Christians who assert that the Bible (as if it were a deck of Tarot cards!) reveals the details of God's impending acts err grievously when they portray Jesus returning to live by the sword that he had previously rejected:

Revelation is not portraying Jesus returning to earth in the future, having repented of his naive gospel ways and having converted to Caesar’s “realistic” Greco-Roman methods instead. He hasn’t gotten discouraged about Caesar seeming to get the upper hand after his resurrection and on that basis concluded that it’s best to live by the sword after all (Matt. 26:52). Jesus hasn’t abandoned the way of peace (Luke 19:42) and concluded the way of Pilate is better, mandating that his disciples should fight after all (John 18:36). He hasn’t had second thoughts about all that talk about forgiveness (Matt. 18:21–22) and concluded that on the 78th offense (or 491st, depending on interpretation), you should pull out your sword and hack off your offender’s head rather than turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:39). (Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), p. 125)

So, in good faith I unabashedly affirm, in Advent and during the rest of the year, Christ will come again! I also hope that well-meaning but profoundly misguided Christians will stop blocking the gates, i.e., that they will discard their biblical ignorance, their naïve thinking that Jesus has already returned, and their liturgical and theological inattentiveness. The real hope of Advent is that God, in God's way and God's time, is bringing to completion what God began in Jesus, a hope that animates and empowers God's people with a genuine zest for life. So this Advent, please do not obstruct these gates; instead, let's proclaim the one who is life itself.

John the Baptist, sin, and Advent

The Gospel reading for the second Sunday in Advent (Matthew 3:1-12) describes the potentially disturbing message of John the Baptist. He boldly denounces sin and calls people to repent. What does this mean for people in the twenty-first century? For one interpretation, read the sermon that I preached this year on that passage.

Debunking healthcare myths

Healthcare is a hot topic in the United States because:

·         The controversy surrounding the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (sometimes called Obamacare) is fraying our civility and eroding our trust in government;

·         The large (now 18%) and growing (projected to reach 34% by 2040)percentage of the U.S. GDP devoted to healthcare seems to have spiraled out of control and breached the limits of affordability;

·         Lastly, but not least important, we all potentially need healthcare, perhaps only to heal or even to save one's own life or the life of those one loves.

Unfortunately, myths cloud and grossly distort the debate.

Consider just two of those myths.

First, Americans allegedly have quicker access to healthcare providers than do people in countries that have universal healthcare. That claim, according to data published in The Atlantic (Olga Khazan, "Universal Healthcare Doesn't Mean Waiting Longer to See a Doctor," November 19, 2013) is false.

In a study of 10 developed countries, all of which have some form of universal healthcare, only people in Canada have a harder time getting an appointment with their physician on the same day, or next day, that the patient contacts the doctor's office:

Access to afterhours care is somewhat better; people in the U.S. have easier access, without going to the emergency room, than do people in France, Sweden, and Canada. 

Only when it comes to getting an appointment with a specialist within two months does the U.S. rank at the top of the chart. Yet even in the U.S., half of all appointments with physicians are with the person's primary care provider.

Contrary to much hype, free enterprise medicine does not ensure fast access.

Second, all Americans allegedly have access to the healthcare they need. Some Americans pay for their own healthcare, some Americans depend upon government programs to pay for care (e.g., Medicaid or Medicare), some Americans rely on private healthcare insurance (e.g., Blue Shield/Blue Cross), and some Americans rely on free treatment in emergency rooms. Many Americans cobble together a combination of those options, paying premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and items not included in their healthcare coverage. All taxpayers and people with healthcare insurance pay for people who do not have coverage. Yet supposedly, everybody has access to necessary care.

This alleged universality of care is also a myth.

I recently saw an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney in which Cheney both lauded American healthcare as the best in the world and emphasized that the care he received was available to all Americans. Indeed, Cheney stressed that all Americans have access to healthcare.

Then I read this recent CNN report that concluded, "Military veterans are dying needlessly because of long waits and delayed care at U.S. veterans hospitals." (Scott Bronstein, Nelli Black, and Drew Griffin, "Hospital delays are killing America's war veterans," November 19, 2013)

Not all Americans have equal access to healthcare. The truth is that people with money and influence can receive exceptional care. Americans who lack money or influence, including many of the veterans who find themselves unable to establish a normal life post-military, can receive inadequate, sporadic, or little healthcare.

What I do not understand is why so many Americans so staunchly defend an approach to healthcare delivery that not only provides second-rate access but is also by far the most expensive, per capita, in the world:

 

Advent

Advent, the four-week period preceding Christmas, began yesterday, December 1. Incidentally, the first day of Advent, always a Sunday, marks the first day of a new Christian year even though the Church observes the visitation of the angel to Mary on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation to Mary by the angel Gabriel, nine months before the commemoration of Jesus' birth on December 25.

In Advent, Christians prepare for their annual celebration of Jesus' birth and look forward to Christ coming again. The stories of Jesus' birth, found in only two of the four Biblical biographies of Jesus (the gospels of Matthew and Luke), tell very different versions of that story; sometimes the two even include sharply contradictory details. Thus, these stories are clearly not historical accounts but theological narratives by which the authors hoped to share their interpretation of the Jesus event with readers. Subsequent Ethical Musings postings, closer to Christmas, will unpack some of the contemporary meaning and relevance of these stories.

Similarly, the Biblical materials that many people use to discern God's plan for the future (and perhaps God's timetable for that plan) are mostly descriptions of what the authors had personally experienced and not prophecy, e.g., the Revelation of John is a description of early Roman persecution of Christians and not prophecy about the future. The Bible's authors used symbols and the future tense to disguise their real message, widely regarded as subversive, from the authorities. Sadly, their technique has also confused generations of Christians. For an example of how these stories can be meaningful, cf. Ethical Musings Rethinking eschatology (the study of end times).

Some years ago, I read this marvelous story:

A traveler arrived in a village in the middle of winter to find an old man shivering in the cold outside the synagogue. 'What are you doing here?' asked the traveler.

'I'm waiting for the coming of the Messiah.'

'That must be an important job,' said the traveler. 'The community must pay you a lot of money.'

'No, not at all. They just let me sit here on this bench. Once in a while someone gives me a little food.'

'That must be hard. But even if they don't pay you, they must honor you for doing this important work.'

'No, not at all they think that I'm crazy.'

'I don't understand. They don't pay you; they don't respect you. You sit in the cold, shivering and hungry. What kind of job is this?'

'Well, it's steady work,' said the old man as he shivered some more. (David Heim, "A Joking Matter," Christian Century, 9 August 2003, p. 29.)

Although the story is Jewish, the old man might easily have been a Jewish Christian awaiting the Messiah's return. The futility of the man's commitment, and the community's lack of support for the man and their lack of belief in the Messiah's coming, mirrors the lip service many Christians pay to traditional theological affirmations that Christ will come again, e.g., as found in the Nicene Creed and Eucharistic Prayers in the Book of Common Prayer.

An alternative and more credible explanation of the Biblical hope of Maranatha! (Come again!) is one of a realized eschatology. That is, when we meet God in this world, then we experience Jesus' return in our thoughts, our relationships, and our actions. The fulfillment of creation is not some miraculous deed that God will unilaterally perform, intervening in the cosmos and disrupting what is happening. The fulfillment of creation will result from people (and all creation!) living into the future in hopeful and loving obedience to the Creator.

Repetition

'Come Again?' we ask, meaning, 'Please tell me

One more time, I didn't quite catch your message.'

'Come again?' Daily praying without knowing it;

This, earliest of invocations, 'Maranatha - Come again!'

He does, of course, in daily bread and Bibles,

Sunday pulpits, tables too, calls to love and duty, most

Especially through this leaning forward season

When winter's white moves greening toward Bethlehem.

The word is 'Come again.'

(J. Barrie Shepherd, "Repetition," Christian Century, December 12, 1979, p. 1240)

Thanksgiving

The concept of thanksgiving (or gratitude) implicitly connotes three elements. First, and most obviously, thanksgiving connotes a person giving thanks or being grateful.

The second element of thanksgiving or gratitude is that the person or group giving thanks or being grateful has recognized and appreciated something as good or beneficial. Today, people give thanks for a wide variety of things and on diverse occasions including promotions, completing a project, births (and sometimes a death), anniversaries, a new job, winning the lottery, an unexpected kindness, etc.

However, the third element that thanksgiving or gratitude connotes is both the most important and least recognized. To be meaningful, the person must thank someone.

Consider winning the lottery. Being thankful for winning a game of chance is, at least, a poor choice of terminology and, at worst, completely illogical – unless one believes that the game's outcome resulted not from random chance but an agent's intervention. This agent may be human or otherwise, depending upon whom one believes has rigged the game, for true randomness precludes any form of intervention. The winner of a random game may feel elated or exhilarated, may feel they have fared better than have the losers, but cannot rightly give thanks. For to whom should they give thanks? The winner of a random game may give thanks for their skill or their opponents' lack of skill; they may thank Lady Chance, God, the game's host, or a guardian angel. An almost endless list of to whom one might give thanks is possible, but all of the options are completely illogical in a true game of chance, because the outcome depends upon random events, beyond anyone's control, and not upon any agent's intervention.

This Thanksgiving, I encourage you to ponder two questions: For what are you thankful? To whom should you give thanks?

Most Thanksgivings, I observe people thanking God for many things (aka blessings) for which God's responsibility is very minimal and indirect. The health of any particular human depends very heavily upon genetic inheritance, behavioral habits, and random events more than it does God's direct intervention. To believe otherwise entails blaming God for the bad health – painful cancers, life-destroying diseases, disrupting disabilities – that affect so many people. Similarly, harvests depend upon random weather processes and a farmer's choices and effort more than upon God's direct intervention. Otherwise, why do some farmers prosper year and year and other, neighboring farmers, struggle to survive year after year?

I am slowly learning to be thankful to myself for much of what I do, feel, and think. Variously formulated Christian theological doctrines such as original sin and total depravity wrongly and completely devalue humans. Created by God, humans are valuable and able to do good things.

Similarly, I am learning to be thankful to others for much of what they do and for my relationships with them. Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to cultivate the habit of intentionally thanking persons for enriching your life through the kind and good things that they do, or through their relationship with you.

Finally, thank God for life. Life is our real blessing from God. For in life – whether in the beauty of the world, relationships of love, human creativity, our limited autonomy, or our self-awareness – we experience an echo or reflection of the divine.

To thank God for more– for blessings that we and not others have received – implicitly presumes that God loves us better or more completely than God loves the others to whom God has been less good, less kind. That presumption is patently false, because God loves everyone equally. Collectively, American exceptionalism (believing that God loves, favors, and blesses the United States more fully than God blesses other nations), which too often colors Thanksgiving holiday celebrations, reflects unhealthy, unchristian hubris.

 

For what are you thankful? To whom should you give thanks?

Medical creep

Medical creep is not a healthcare worker who behaves inappropriately.

Medical creep connotes the tendency for healthcare providers to prescribe procedures and treatments for patients in the absence of evidence that demonstrates the procedure or treatment will benefit the patient.

The popularity of CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) illustrates medical creep. Before 1960, the only treatment for a heart that stopped was heart massage. A physician – usually a cardiac surgeon – would open the chest and manually massage the heart, thereby pumping blood through the body. A Johns Hopkins 1960 study described an alternative approach called closed-chest cardiac massage. The method successfully resuscitated all 20 of the patients involved in the study, 14 of whom suffered no brain damage or other ill effects.

Fifty years later, CPR has become the default treatment for every person who dies.

Consequently, survival rates have plummeted. In hospitals, the success rate for elderly patients given CPR is less than 15%; as many as a quarter of the survivors suffer brain damage.

What happens?

Healthcare professionals want to save lives. Loved ones want to see their beloved saved. TV shows and media reports highlight CPR successes.

Yet not everyone with heart failure is a prime candidate for a successful CPR. Multiple factors including age, heart condition, other health conditions, and the length of time that the heart has been stopped partially determine whether even the most skillful application of CPR will succeed. (Brendan Reilly, "How CPR Became So Popular," The Atlantic, Nov. 4, 2013)

The U.S. healthcare system is the world's most expensive, offers the most advanced treatment and procedures available, and yet achieves poorer outcomes than does healthcare in most developed nations.

Identifying medical creep suggests one part of the answer to fixing our broken healthcare system. We must become better-informed healthcare consumers.

For example, I do not want CPR unless there is a reasonable chance that I will survive without significant brain damage or other major complications. I do not want doctors performing tests on me that will not alter the treatment they provide me. I do not want treatment that does not have a proven benefit for patients with my condition or, if the treatment is experimental, is likely to benefit patients with my condition. I know that death is inevitable, do not live with an illusory hope of extending this life indefinitely, and value both the quality as well as the length of my life.

The time to consider and to discuss these issues is when one, and one's loved ones, are well. Preplanning offers the hope of better living, better dying, and guilt free grief for survivors.

Poverty - not an intractable problem

According to Luke's gospel (6:20), Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor." Matthew's gospel spiritualizes that saying (5:3), reporting that Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The affluent tend to find the latter more comfortable than the former because spiritualizing Jesus' teaching saps those teachings of their revolutionary demands that we care for the least among us.

The United States, by any measure, ranks among the elite top handful of the world's wealthiest nations. Yet a staggering 1 in 6 of its citizens – about 16% – live in poverty.

We can change this immoral situation. For example, John Sutter, an economist who writes for CNN, recently proposed seven ways to reduce the income inequality gap in the United States ("7 ways to narrow the rich-poor gap," CNN Opinion, October 29, 2013):

1. Break down social barriers – when the affluent and poor see one another as real humans, the affluent generally respond with compassion and real help
2. Improve public schools; unify public and private schools – attending public schools helps to build bridges between children from different socio-economic backgrounds; private schools sap reform drives and economically segregate children
3. Raise the minimum wage to 1960s levels, at least
4. Tax the rich at a reasonable rate
5. Give workers a voice in their companies – this is good management and good for business, increasing profitability, improving operations and giving workers a stake in the business
6. Reign in crazy-huge donations to political campaigns – if large donations did not buy influence why would the wealthy make those political contributions?
7. Give money to the poor – maybe at random

Sutter's seven points may not be a panacea but offer a starting point for public discourse about how to close the income gap and decrease wealth inequality, problems that threaten the foundations of democracy and thus its very survival. I've advocated several of these positions in previous Ethical Musings posts.

What will you do to reduce the unconscionable gap between the affluent and the poor?