On the morning of January 1st as I started my (almost) daily ritual of prayer and I thanked God for a new day, it occurred to me to thank God also for a new year. Then, as one thought flowed into another, I realized as Christians we celebrate two New Years in very close succession. Advent starts four weeks before Christmas when we start a new year: the beginning of the church colander. Our Christian year, starting then, is marked by the scripture readings of the Common Lectionary. It is possible for our life as Christians to revolve around these readings, either the three year cycle for Sunday worship or the two year cycle for personal reflection.
Then a few weeks down the road another new year is ushered in on December 31st into January 1st. This marks the beginning of the new year of our secular life. And here is where it gets complicated. For these two new years symbolize the juggling act we find ourselves in. How do we live in and straddle what are really two worlds the secular and the holy, that exist beside each other? (Fans of science fiction could even imagine them as parallel universes.) When a choice is presented to us that would reflect one world or the other which do we choose? This is a conundrum that has plagued Christians (those who were originally called the Followers of the Way) from the very advent of the Christian church.
Two authors together in two books look at this very question; the question of loyalty to the secular world, the state or loyalty to God's Kingdom. The two books The First Christmas and The Last Week, both written jointly by Marcus J Borg and John Dominic Crossan, look at the very beginning of Jesus' life and the last week of that life. In both books they touch on the question of loyalty between these two worlds. In The First Christmas the authors look at the concept of peace and how the world of the State and the Kingdom of God would achieve this. The authors had earlier in The First Christmas explained how the words used to describe the "divinity" of Ceaser and that of Jesus were the same. At the end of chapter 7 in The First Christmas the authors say this:
The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns again, and always worse than before. And it is that escalator violence that then endangers our world.
The four week period of Advent before Christmas – and the six-week period of Lent before Easter – are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggest that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day's violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?
We face a similar choice each Christmas, and so each Advent is a time of repentance for the past and change for the future. Do we think that peace on earth comes from Caesar or Christ? Do we think it comes through violent victory or nonviolent justice? Advent, like Lent, is about a choice of how to live personally and individually and internationally.
Christmas is not about tinsel and mistletoe or even ornaments and presents, but about what means will we use toward the end of a peace from heaven upon our earth. Or is "peace on earth" but a Christmas ornament taken each year from the attic of basement and returned there as soon as possible.
Well, is peace a Christmas ornament or is it a concept that we as Christians strive for via justice? Or are we taken in by the constant drum beat of peace via victory? The choice is ours and it begs the question, how do we as individuals practice justice in our day-to-day lives? That is a question for a new year for us as individuals and as a society.
The above words originally written at the start of the secular new year and not posted are relevant as we enter the Lenten season, as we begin that section of our church year that looks back at the time when a state, using violence and death, tried to silence the concept of love and peace represented in the person of Jesus Christ. For a short time the State and violence seem to have won. That victory however was short lived (it lasted from only the day of His earthly death until Pentecost). And today during the season of Lent it is not the State and Caesar we worship it is the divine person of Jesus.
We can ask ourselves today have we as a society learned anything? Do we prefer the Caesar riding in on a war horse with his soldiers that can bring, as the authors of The First Christmas put it, "Victory (that )established not peace, but lull." Or do we long for the Peace that can come via non-violence, diplomacy (blessed are the peace makers) and the Christ centered concept of loving our enemies?
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