Living into the expectation of the incarnation is not a passive endeavor. Anticipating Advent is not about quietistic waiting but living into promised hope and freedom. It is letting the breaking in of Christ into our world release us from systems of fear that entrap us and patterns of sin that deny the very hope of the incarnation. Traditionally in the Western church Advent was a time of prayer, fasting, and acts of service (it still is in the Eastern Church). One did not wait simply to wait; one prepared oneself to meet the coming Christ by disciplining oneself in the very liberating ways of Christ. The advent of Christ in the past and the promised reconciling advent of Christ in the future are remembered and anticipated by living into the advent of Christ in the present through these acts of discipleship. Christ suffered so that we could have this freedom and hope, so we therefore accept this freedom from fear and sin by disciplining ourselves into becoming ever more Christ-like. It is not a tedious waiting around, but an embodied anticipation that consumes every moment of our lives.

So it is curious that during this time of year that instead of anticipating Christ by accepting our freedom from fear and sin by imitating Christ and doing likewise for others, we instead use our freedom to create systems of fear for others. Advent is less about preparation and discipline these days as it is forcing others to live in fear of Christians. For some their freedom in Christ has become justification for insisting that all people orient their lives around catering to them. A culture of fear is created where their freedom is upheld at all costs, even at the expense of the freedom of others. Freedom becomes for some less about Christ’s redeeming and reconciling work and more about ensuring their freedom by insisting that everyone else become exactly like them. Christ’s offer is therefore repeatedly cheapened each time they insist that their freedom isn’t real unless, for instance, atheists, Jews, Muslims, and commercial centers fearfully sacrifice their freedoms and acknowledge a certain interpretation of Jesus as the reason for the season.

Instead of accepting the freedom Christ offered through his suffering by accepting a life that embraces even suffering (or simply the mild inconvenience of exposure to the other) in order to do the same for others, Christians are insisting that others suffer for them. But insisting that others proclaim what should be the liberating and reconciling name of Christ by threatening to boycott their businesses or bringing lawsuits against them isn’t to live into the expectation of the incarnation. Can one truly have witnessed to hope and embraced release from fear and sin if one’s visible response to such is to in turn force others into a place of fear devoid of hope? As in the parable Jesus tells of the unforgiving servant, it does not represent the kingdom of God to accept ones freedom and forgiveness by then turning around and oppressing others.

The breaking in of Christ into the world changed everything. We actively await the advent of Christ by accepting the gift of Christ’s first advent. But what Christ offered was the gift of a new identity, of new creation. Living into that identity takes work; it takes discipline. New creations do not repeat the fearful patterns of this world by pushing them off onto others while hoarding the supposed blessings of freedom for themselves. To anticipate the gift of advent requires radical change of those that wait. As Jürgen Moltmann wrote of this promise of advent past, present, and future,

Every gift involves change. When unjust men and women are justified, the consequence is that they are sent out to work for more social justice. When peaceless men and women are reconciled, the consequence is that they are sent out to make peace in the conflicts of this society. There can be no other response for Christians to their experience of God.

If we expect God we have to respond to God as God calls us to respond. Releasing us from our fears and sins is never a call for us to bind others with the same. Waiting for the breaking in of Christ in this world is not a sanctioning of actions that oppose the very way of Christ. Maybe it would therefore be helpful to return to Advent as a disciplined period of prayer, fasting, and good works. Perhaps then we could anticipate the incarnation by actually incarnating Christ in the world.

Advent heralds the arrival of a new way of being in the world. The Divine has broken into our world, shattering the boundaries of the limits we assumed defined our existence. Hope was incarnate in the most unexpected of guises – giving testimony in its very form to the freedom it delivered. Freedom from the fear that this is all there is – that the patterns of this world hold the only answers available to the questions of our souls. Freedom from the oppressive lie that in a world of scarcity all we can do is secure whatever we can for ourselves by whatever means necessary. Freedom to have hope that there is a light shining in the darkness.

This Advent of hope ushers in a life-affirming freedom that is ours to live into. And yet we continue to act as if we are afraid to claim that freedom – or more precisely to allow others to claim access to this limitless way of life. Even the very proclamation and remembrance of the incarnation of hope gets subjected to our fearful limits, forcefully sheltered from being transformed by the very boundary-breaking hope that it is. We await the precious birth and then promptly place Jesus in prisons of our own making – ostensibly to serve him, but in truth to ensure that we can control his message and dictate who is allowed access to it. Therefore it becomes hard to think of Advent without also recalling to mind the words of Frances Croake Frank’s poem “Did the Woman Say?” –

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the first time in the dark of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
“This is my body, this is my blood”?

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the last time in the dark rain on a hilltop,
After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,
“This is my body, this is my blood”?

Well that she said it to him then,
For dry old men,
Brocaded robes belying barrenness
Ordain that she not say it for him now.

It is far easier to turn the woman into a spiritual metaphor of ideal submission than to let her be free to physically participate in the life of Christ (then and now). The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness refuses to open its eyes and let it chase the shadows away. But Jesus came to set his people free.

Paul Ricoeur defines freedom as “the capacity to live according to the paradoxical law of superabundance,” or in other words, to embrace the surplus of meaning in the already and not yet of the eschatological event of the new creation. Hope broke into the world and redefined everything. We are no longer bound by the limits of scarcity which persuade us that to share our food or power with another is to deprive ourselves in some way. Hope opens up the possibility of living into the Kingdom of God, of letting go of limits in order to embrace abundant life. It is the living hopefully into the much more promise of Romans 5:15 – “For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.”

Advent is about abounding grace at work setting people free to live into this limitless hope. It is about agreeing with Mary that already in the past, present, and future I AM that I AM has “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” It is about recognizing the upside-down sense of a King being born in a stable. It is about letting go of the fearful power-plays we have imposed upon the breaking of bread. It is about realizing that it is only once we share what we have (be that our resources or even the space where our voice gets heard) that we find there is a surplus leftover even after we have all had our fill.

Advent is about expectantly anticipating the freedom Christ promises by living into that very freedom now. It is about shattering the constraints we have shored up around ourselves in order to let the light in.

So there I was in a room full of a few hundred older, very reserved, and 99.9% white Christians who were singing a South African freedom song as if it were a 17th century hymn. It was in the middle of singing the song that I was stopped short by the thought that what we were doing there was the exact opposite of what we were proclaiming in song. How could we truly believe that the powers of oppression have no power if we weren’t embodying any visible sign of it? Beyond the oddity of having someone conduct our singing about freedom so as to ensure we hit the right pitches, the dissonance of the entire situation was unsettling. I couldn’t help but wonder if the act of appropriating a song of liberation from another culture and subduing and anglicizing it was not in itself an act of oppression of the song’s very power all for the sake of allowing us to feel multicultural an affirming of the “other.” Where were the acts of liberation? Where were the faces and voices of those others? Where in our midst was the struggle to turn the world upside-down, destroy the segregation of our churches, and humbly sacrifice our vision of how a worship service must function in order to make room for the hallelujahs of others?

These thoughts stopped my voice in the moment; I couldn’t finish singing the song. I did hear others grumbling about the song after the service. Either they had missed the explanations of the “he” referring to Satan and were upset that we would dare sing that God had no power. Or they were upset that they had to sing about the person of Satan since we all know he doesn’t actually exist. But I was met with blank stares when I suggested that I was uneasy singing a song of liberation in an unliberated space.

I am fully aware that no one there, especially not those who planned that liturgy, had such motives in mind in choosing that song. In fact I am sure they assumed that the choice was one for diversity and inclusion that challenged assumptions about what constitutes proper hymns. But as I reflected on the moment my unease remained. It made me wonder how often in the church we make that promise of freedom into a hollow platitude. Like when we spiritualize the call to release the oppressed and free the prisoners into being simply about overcoming our personal demons. Or twist the call to love our neighbor as ourselves to really be about just loving ourselves. Or preach that Christians shouldn’t be distracted by politics, or economics, or corporate greed (since addressing those issues might require us to live counter-culturally…). We speak of liberation and freedom as if they are facades. They make us look great on the outside, but are so impotent of concepts in our theologies that they do nothing to affect who we actually are. But the veneer of liberation only serves to further hide away the oppression still inside. The most empowering thing for racism is for people to believe it has been dealt with. But that isn’t true freedom.

Liberation cannot be just a guise. Inclusion cannot be trivial. Freedom from oppression cannot be spiritualized away. I had to stop singing because I felt like I was participating in the very act I was claiming to have overcome. There were voices missing in that space and I knew I couldn’t say Satan had no power in the midst of that absence. But even so, all I could do was not sing.

The episode is a beautiful incarnation story and has repeatedly popped into my mind as I reflect on the current Occupy Wall Street protests (yes, this is the way my mind works). There is no precise correlation, but I couldn’t help but notice similarities. In our isolated attempts at living the American dream according to the rules the system imposed upon us we know there are problems, but there is a tendency to assume that some authority will somehow eventually fix our problem for us. So we wait patiently, abiding by the rules, taking comfort in our sweet but impotent religious rituals, dying slowly as we come to mistake the rat-race for reality. A few of us might get ahead, moved to the fast lane so to speak, which we take as a sign of hope that the system is working and that one day we might actually arrive. We might talk about freedom, and love, and justice, and mercy as if they are some ideal we can strive towards – a better world we can hope to someday arrive at – but they aren’t reflected in the shape of our everyday lives. That is consumed with inching forward in our individual existence.

So when something like Occupy Wall Street comes along it challenges the status quo. And if our hope is in the fulfillment of the status quo, a challenge to that makes us fearful. What if we lose our place? What if all the time we have spent was wasted? Shouldn’t we just wait for the people in charge to figure it all out and get us all running smoothly again? What is scary to some about the Occupy movement is that instead of giving comfort in the moment or hope in the continued status quo, it is calling for liberation. Perhaps that is not the message of every voice or even of the details, but the collective message is one calling people out to a different way. It is a message that the system is broken, we are hopelessly stuck, and we need to find a way out.

There might not be a TARDIS to incarnate the Doctor into our particular moment, but for the sake of liberation perhaps we are the one we have been waiting for. Liberation is the result of the event of love. Not a vague hope in the idea of love, but the event of love entering into and utterly transforming the tragedy of the status quo. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote about this love,

It is not the interpretation of love as an ideal, a heavenly power or as a commandment, but of love as an event in a loveless, legalistic world: the event of an unconditioned and boundless love which comes to meet man, which takes hold of those who are unloved and forsaken, unrighteous or outside the law, and gives them a new identity, liberates them from the norms of social identifications and from the guardians of social norms and idolatrous images. … [But] Just as the unconditional love of Jesus for the rejected made the Pharisees his enemies and brought him to the cross, so unconditional love also means enmity and persecution in a world in which the life of man is made dependent on particular social norms, conditions and achievements. A love which takes precedence and robs these conditions of their force is folly and scandal in this world.”

The impulse toward freedom, toward liberation, is slowly awakening across the nation. The doors have been thrown open; we now have to choose if we will drive out into the light. The protests are, of course, not perfect. There are the dangers of creating new constraining status quos, of corruption, or simply the re-iteration of the same status quos with new faces at the helm. These are the typical demons that prey upon those embracing the event of liberating love – demons that the guardians of the current status quo are sure to parade about in attempts to scare the timid away from joining the movement towards freedom. But love always involves risk. Freedom from the conditions and gridlock of this world is always tied to the ongoing event of love. Love – that unconditional event that liberates for the shalom of the whole – is not an ideal but that ongoing way of life. It takes work to live into a new identity – to figure out how to live differently. The call to occupy isn’t for a quick fix (which I sincerely hope it doesn’t settle for), but it is instead the call to usher in an entire new way of being that requires us all to drastically change as we enter into the difficult work of liberating love – despite obstacles, despite opposition.

It’s hard to speak of a different way in our world today. Perhaps all I’m doing is just reflecting on a good story here. But maybe it’s a parable, or better yet, a dream. And the world is waking up and sometimes dreams do come true.

While many from the left were outraged by the idea of associating these arch-conservatives, who stand against many of the things historical feminists have supported, with feminism, others supported the idea. Naomi Wolf, who seems to have a love/hate relationship with feminism, wrote that the problem some have with calling those women feminists is that we don’t understand the history of feminism. She argues (rightly in my opinion) that feminism has only become associated with leftist agendas since the 1960’s, but was, in its origins, more balanced and open to conservative values. But then she explains her reasoning why -

The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it is these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left. But, apart from these sound bites, there is a powerful constituency of right-wing women in Britain and Western Europe, as well as in America, who do not see their values reflected in collectivist social-policy prescriptions or gender quotas. They prefer what they see as the rugged individualism of free-market forces, a level capitalist playing field, and a weak state that does not impinge on their personal choices.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are many forms of feminism. And I’ll even admit that this rugged individualist strain made up of (as Sarah Palin described it) “gun-toting self-reliant women” is, in its own way, a form a feminism. But I am highly uncomfortable with people who, like Wolf, reduce feminism to simply being about “individual choice and freedom” (and I’m not the only one). This reduction is something I encounter in the church-world all the time. Feminist or liberation theology is labeled as merely being about individual rights, and since Jesus didn’t come talking about rights but about how we can live communally and eucharistically together as the body, such theologies must be dismissed as simply cultural and therefore unbiblical. Granted, such a dismissal usually allows for the powers that be to continue to assert their own individual preferences and ideas over those of everyone else in the guise of being biblical, but the conversation has already been shut down.

It’s like the people who mock or complain about so-called political correctness. They view having to be aware and sensitive to the feelings and situations of other people as infringing upon their rights (like their right to make fun of other people). It’s not about loving and respecting others, but about losing their right to oppress. Complaining about other people doing the very thing they’re already doing ensures that meaningful conversations that might lead to change never occur.

But, contrary to what those who fear their loss of power might assert, individual freedoms and rights has never been what feminism has been about for me. My affinity to feminism (or postcolonialism or liberationist thought) has always been based on that call to live faithfully as the body of Christ. Loving others as Christ loved us means loosing the bonds of oppression and setting captives free. It means treating people, all people, as image-bearers of God. If that means advocating for rights for some, and for the elite to relinquish some of their power in order to put an end to oppression, then so be it. If that means giving up personal comfort and choices so that I can respect, instead of mar, the image of God in others, then so be that as well. Rights for the marginalized are simply a by-product of the privileged finally attempting to live self-sacrificially as part of the body of Christ. Conversations about feminism or postcolonialism help me become aware of who the people are who need love and what ways I can make myself a living sacrifice in order to do so.

Holding so tight to privilege that one rejects discussions about helping others, or disdains collectivist social-policies that mirror the sort of eucharistic life Christ expects of us, is more in line with rugged individualism than the feminism I have known. Associating feminism with that selfish, individualist, and blatantly unchristian way of living that the far right preaches these days, hurts. Just as I often have to say in response of some far-right Christians’ attempts to harm the poor, destroy God’s creation, and keep people captive, that that sort of Christianity has little to do with the message of Jesus I find in the Bible, I guess I now have to start saying to the rugged individualist feminists that I am not that sort of feminist. Palin and Bachmann can have their “it’s all about me and my privilege” feminism, but, as a Christian, that has nothing to do with me.

I love freedom; I appreciate the freedoms I have. What I find intriguing though are what exact freedoms it is that we celebrate in this country and which ones we could care less about. The freedom to hold a sign with a racist slur about the President is apparently something we hold dear, as is our “right” to have free and immediate access to porn (not to mention guns). The government had better not interfere with our access to junk food or dare tell our kids how to eat healthy; we’ll develop diabetes and drive up insurance rates if we want to. But we’re okay though with the government tapping our phones and having a kill switch for the internet. And apparently we are also okay with the government allowing companies to sell contaminated meat to our schools and passing laws making it illegal for us to publicly question the companies that do so. Let’s just say our relationship with freedom is complicated.

Anthony Bourdain addresses the food contamination issue in his latest book, Medium Raw, wondering why we are okay giving up the freedom of our access (our children’s access) to uncontaminated food. His snarky, uncensored take on the subject is one of the best I’ve read yet. And this is from Bourdain, the guy who is not shy in his frequent mocking of vegetarians or the organic/locavore movements. He writes on the meat industry in America -

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product to grinders who agree to not test their product for E.coli contamination – until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources. Meaning, the company who grinds all that shit together (before selling it to your school system) often can’t test it until after they mix it with meat they bought from other (sometimes as many as three or four) slaughterhouses. … It’s like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five guys immediately before sleeping with you – just so she can’t point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.
…
I believe that, as an American, I should be able to walk into any restaurant in America and order my hamburger – that most American of foods – medium fucking rare. I don’t believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning label to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria. I believe I shouldn’t have to be advised to thoroughly clean and wash up immediately after preparing a hamburger. I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste. I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph – much less the same sentence. Unless you are talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.
…
Is it too much to feel that it should be a basic right that one can cook and eat a hamburger without fear? To stand proud in my own backyard (if I had a backyard), grilling a nice medium-rare fucking hamburger for my kid – without worrying that maybe I’m feeding her a shit sandwich? That I not feel the need to cross-examine my mother, should she have the temerity to offer my child meatloaf? P.98-100

Seriously, when did cheap and convenient become more important to us than avoiding consuming fecal matter, chemicals like ammonia, and deadly viruses (or for that matter the right to question the presence of such things in our food)? In the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation in the world, that we have given up the freedom of knowing that the food we eat is safe is telling. Or perhaps it’s just that we value the freedom of the meat-industry to serve us contaminated food more. Like I said, our views of freedom are complicated. Or just plain crazy.

The concept of freedom is of course an emotional issue in the U.S. We are fond of the phrase "freedom isn't free" and are told to honor the soldiers in Iraq for "ensuring our freedom." Neither of those phrases in the way they are typically used have anything to do with freedom and usually have more to do with justifying the restriction of freedoms. So needless to say, discussions regarding freedom these days are a bit skewed. In my understanding of the concept, freedom means being free from oppression. That oppression can of course take many forms – including control, enslavement, or even fear. The thing is, no one is ever truly free from all forms of oppression. There is always something controlling us – using fear to keep us where they want us to be. So in light of that, the only people who are truly free are those who just don't care about what will happen to them if they resist the oppression. In short, the people who have true freedom are those with nothing left to lose.

A few different things have me thinking about this. First, as I've been rereading and rewatching Harry Potter, I am amazed yet again at Rowling's nuanced presentation of evil and oppression. Evil insinuates itself in that world slowly. It starts with minor restrictions of freedom – a teacher punishing students for telling the truth or the government not letting the newspaper report the real news. Lies are spread, loyalties questioned, and little by little the freedoms disappear, until non-pureblood wizards are being round-up and others are going into hiding. Those who speak out against the oppression face dire consequences – like the kidnapping and torture of their children. In the end it is only Harry Potter, the orphan who has lost nearly everyone he loves, – who truly has nothing left to lose – who has the freedom to stand up to the oppression.

Then this past week I read of the start of trials of protesters in Iran. The New York Times reported, "The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 opposition figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion, and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election." Those that raised their voices for freedom are now bearing the brunt of oppression. Similar thing with the journalists who are now (thankfully) free from their captivity in North Korea. While they were trying to bring truth to the world, they both had a lot to lose in the process. Hearing the story of Euna Lee's 4 year old daughter who was told during her mother's captivity that "mommy was at work" broke my heart. I don't know if I could be willing to risk never seeing my children again in order to fight oppression.

I know that making sacrifices is a basic part of fighting for freedom. If no one was willing to take risks – sacrificing their families and even their own lives, then oppression would simply continue. But those sacrifices are chosen. People have to be willing to pay the price to seek freedom. When oppression can't demand a price of us, it has no power over us. So either society grants us that freedom or we decide that we don't care what others may do to us – but either way we are only free when we've got nothing left to lose.

Sarah and Angelina Grimke – sisters born to an "aristocratic" Southern slaveholding family, who after converting to the Quaker faith became abolitionists and women's rights advocates. They were among the first women to take a public stand against the oppression of women and slaves. Angelina lectured to legislative groups and Sarah wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836), urging abolition, and Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838). Theirs was faith in action, bringing freedom to those denied a voice.

Ruby Bridges – for the sake of a better education for all this six year old became one of the first black kids to attend an all-white school. Even though she received threats, her father lost his job, U.S. Marshalls had to escort her to school, and she ended up being the only student in her class with the help of her family, her teacher, and psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles, she stuck it out. And started our country down the path of freedom of (good) education for all.

Romeo Ramirez – the first American to be awarded (in 2003) the Robert F. Kennedy Human Right Award. Ramirez moved to Florida from Guatemala at age 15 in search of work. What he saw in the citrus groves and tomato farms — forced labor, armed guards in the fields, economic servitude — turned the slight, soft-spoken farmworker into an organizer and activist. He joined a group called the Coalition for Immokalee Workers, went undercover, testified in federal court, and helped put three labor crew bosses behind bars for the next decade. He is the face of those seeking freedom for the modern day slaves in our midst.

Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to in the fight to free others from oppression?