Advent and Despair
My family has always observed the season of Advent, a liturgical practice that marks the beginning of the church calendar. Advent means “coming,” and it is usually marked by reading prophetic bible verses that looked forward to the birth of Jesus as a way of helping us prepare our hearts and souls for Christmas, to help us focus on the longing, yearning, and despair that our spiritual ancestors experienced while waiting for their Messiah to arrive.
Despair. It sounds so melodramatic. We often pair it with words like depths of, ultimate, utter, or pit of (for you Princess Bride fans). When I hear the word “despair” I envision an actress from the 1940s, dressed in an elegant evening gown, full hair and makeup, sprawled across a chaise lounge or davenport, her arm covering her eyes, because she just can’t even after hearing that her love has spurned her. She writhes on the sofa while bemoaning the futility of adoration and devotion, sure that she will never love again.
True despair, not the dramatized kind we see on screen, is a state of utter hopelessness. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, and if there is, you’re sure it’s a train. In fact, just collapse both ends of the tunnel and bury me here because there is no reason to go on. That is despair. No light. No hope. No desire. Nothing but resignation to the fact that this is all there ever is and ever will be. This was the attitude of the Hebrews after thousands of years wandering and persecution. They felt abandoned by God.
Despite prophesies and promises of a Messiah, still they languished in despair. In the movie Defiance, we experience the true story of Tuvia Bielski and a group of Belarusian Jews who lived as refugees in the forests and fields of their country to avoid persecution and murder at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. Many escaped the ghettos that had been built by the occupying German forces to sequester them and, ultimately, ship them off to concentration camps.
These communities carved out a life for themselves under brutal conditions, barely surviving the winters living outdoors in makeshift shelters with little to no food, and under the constant threat of being discovered by Nazi patrols intent on stamping out the Russian otryads, small detachments of fighters who were waging guerrilla warfare against them.
In the midst of a particularly brutal winter, their community gathered for a funeral for two of it’s members. Many of in the community were considering returning to the ghetto, recalling the trials of their forefathers who lived in exile under the Egyptians for hundreds of years. Bearing in mind their current situation and the long history of Hebrew persecution, the de facto rabbi of the group offers the following prayer:
“Merciful God, we commit our friends…to your care. We have no more prayers, no more tears. We have run out of blood. Choose another people. We have payed for each of your commandments, we have covered every stone and field with ashes. Sanctify another land. Choose another people. Teach them the deeds and the prophecies. Grant us but one more blessing: take back the gift of our holiness. Amen.”
That is true despair. When you feel that God has not just abandoned you, but when you actually ask him to just leave you alone, to choose someone else to bless—this is beyond mere surrender. When you surrender in a battle you are at the very least asking for mercy from your adversary. But when your adversary is God himself, and you find yourself begging for complete abandonment, that is the absence of any hope.
Advent is more than just a cute calendar with card stock windows that pop out revealing our favorite holiday images. It is more than opening a door in a wooden box or reading a bible verse about the birth of Jesus every night around the dinner table. Advent is remembering the despair, the utter hopelessness of a community, and joining our story to theirs. Through Advent, much like Lent, we examine our lives and search the deepest parts of our hearts for those spaces that have not seen the light. We strive to step outside of our comfortable lives where immediacy has stamped out our need for hope and any memory of true longing. Where denial or a constant pursuit of entertainment or other forms of self-medicating have helped us mask our despair.
Advent is taking the time to be honest with ourselves; to take stock of our lives and realize that everything we have and everything we want is not all there is. There is a missing piece somewhere that can only be filled with the hope for a Kingdom that is both here and is still to come. Advent is a reminder that we all live in the “now and not yet,” a reminder that despair is real, but also that abandonment and hopelessness are not forever.
Lord, remind us that you are with us.