why risk?
Advent is the season of hope, expectant waiting, which is always a choice of faith in these darkening days. Sometimes our Advent theme comes early. Someone suggests a song, an image, a phrase to focus our minds and hearts. This year I was kept waiting, such that some wondered if Advent would even happen, since we had heard no preparations.
Listening to Wholehearted Faith, the words of Rachel Held Evans being read by friends, I heard her speak particularly of risk. Poignant, given that she was eight years younger than me when she died suddenly in 2019, mother of young children with so much left to say and do and be. Clearly, her husband Dan still believes in that risk, as he asked their friend Jeff Chu to complete her book-in-progress. Rachel begins with the Yes of Advent, our own 2019 theme, focusing on the women who said, “Yes” as her answer to why she is (still) a Christian, starting with Mary saying…
yes to God, yes to a wholehearted call she could not possibly understand, yes to vulnerability in the face of societal judgment, yes to the considerable risk of pregnancy and childbirth, yes to clogged milk ducts and spit-up in her hair and hundreds of middle-of-the-night feedings, yes to scary fevers and learning as you go…, yes to a vision for herself and her little boy of a mission that would bring down rulers and lift up the humble, that would turn away the rich and fill the hungry with good things, that would scatter the proud and gather the lowly, yes to a life that came with no guarantee of her safety or her son’s. (p. 4)
Saying yes is a risk. This morning I googled “hope and risk” and was surprised that thesaurus.plus describes them as related and even synonymous. Far from being a strange theme for Advent, risk is another way of understanding hope, both of which can feel difficult or even impossible alone. Perhaps that is why we need a theme- to encourage each other to hope, to strengthen our ability to risk love, to light the candles for our community in the dark.
I consider past leaps of faith, the risks we have taken in hope that God is at work, that God will honor our Yes to the future we glimpse, but do not know. Personally, and as a fellowship. Where do we find the ability to hope, to risk? Today’s gospel reading thrice mentions joy/happiness/blessing describing Jesus, the Father, and the disciples:
At that very moment, Jesus overflowed with joy from the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and shown them to babies. Indeed, Father, this brings you happiness…. Turning to the disciples, he said privately, “Happy are the eyes that see what you see. Luke 10:21,23 (CEB)
I am reminded that my hope and strength is in these connections. The Holy Spirit who brings joy. The life and words of Jesus, revealing the nature of God with us. That the Father is happy to show the kingdom through and to babies. And in my fellow disciples, observing together and giving each other eyes to see God’s work in the world. I can get bogged down in the everyday tasks- the practical parts of managing building repairs, meetings, finances, charity, scheduling, and pressing needs. Advent helps me re-center to hope, to risk, to receive and reflect love. To begin again with Mary, this year through Rachel Held Evans’ words:
To understand Mary’s humanity and her central role in Jesus’s story is to remind ourselves of the true miracle of the Incarnation- and that is the core Christian conviction that God is with us, plain ordinary us. God is with us in our fears and in our pain, in our morning sickness and in our ear infections, in our refugee crisis and in our endurance of Empire, in smelly barns and unimpressive backwater towns, in the labor pains of a new mother and in the cries of a tiny infant. In all these things, God is with us- and God is for us. And through Mary’s example, God invites us to take the risk of love- even though it undoubtedly opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt, being scared, and feeling disappointed. (p. 6)
This Advent, may we together take the risk of love, fixing our eyes and our hope on the promise of God with us. May we light the candles for each other, responding with Yes to the God who speaks light into the darkness. -Renée