Advent, I have to admit, is one of my favorite seasons in the Christian calendar. It’s about waiting, watching, being alert. But for what? For Christ to return.
Seriously?
What does it mean to utter the traditional words, “Come, Lord Jesus!”
Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., in his little booklet, Preparing for Christmas. Daily Meditations for Advent (© 2008), says of this phrase that it represents a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves (p. 5).
To await from the Lord’s return fulfillment (not just any fulfillment, but the fulfillment of all fulfillments), to be true to the one who is to come as no one other than the one that dwelt among us “full of grace and truth,” is to be freed from other ultimate claims on our allegiance, especially those devoid of grace and truth. Worldly claims to ultimacy have too often ended in horror.
One theory claiming ultimacy for itself in our day seems to be the one that espouses that, if governments would just refrain from any regulatory influence on the “free” market, we’d all be better off.
Critical questions should always be asked of any theory, but especially of such purporting to offer simple and sweeping solutions to our current economic problems. First and foremost, we should ask: who stands to gain by such a theory, and who will lose out? Such theories, contrary to common assumption, are not merely academic; they are also tools in ongoing human struggles for power.
Without any rules, the word ‘free’ in free market would simply refer to a market dominated by its most powerful players. That, in fact, is what we have today, due to globalization. A global market is one which, for lack of any global regulatory body with enforcement capabilities, is almost impossible to regulate; it is the reason that multi-national corporations can operate with unparalleled freedom, i.e. without restraint. Because of this lack of restraint in the global economy, multi-national corporations are increasingly successful in dismantling restraints within the framework of national economies, and this because they can play off one national economy against the other until they get the concessions, the “freedoms” they want.
In other words, says the global corporate player, ‘If I don’t like your nation’s rules, fine; I’ll just base my headquarters, or even my production facility, in some other country, one without labor laws and high corporate tax rates, one that will help me maximize my profits. Such maximization always occurs at someone’s expense. Politicians, eager to be seen as being proactive on the jobs creation front (not to mention being keen on campaign contributions and a post-political careers in the lobbying industry) are quick to ‘respond.’
This is the cause of the downward spiral, the ‘race for the bottom,’ in which we currently find ourselves, and in which we will continue to find ourselves, if we do not succeed in establishing some internationally binding rules that ensure that the markets do not benefit only its strongest players. Freedom understood in this way would be little more than domination of the many by the few. Freedom of opportunity requires ground rules, rules that ensure some degree of competitive fairness.
Blind faith in an unregulated market is starkly at odds with our own U.S. Constitution, though you’d never know it by listening to those that would interpret the latter merely as a document designed to ensure as little government influence on the economic sphere as possible. On the contrary, the Constitution rests on the fundamental insight that human (special)interests, left unchecked, are destructive; it therefore establishes a form of government that does not deny the existence of such interests but forces them into a process of legislation designed to lead to their being transformed into a general interest, one that truly serves the good of all.
That the Constitution can be misconstrued as advocating anything other than this shows a disturbing trend, namely one in which the marketplace is increasingly seen as the chief means of organizing human life, relegating politics, and our republican form of government no less, to a mere supporting role of little or no significance in the scheme of things – a disturbing, but also a dangerous trend, since the de facto prevailing uncritical anti-government bias runs the serious risk of leading to a situation in which the democratic process may well be sacrificed to so-called market laws, erroneously thought to be equivalent to laws of nature. In short, by endorsing this trend, we are allowing ourselves to be transformed from being citizens into being consumers only.
Buying into an unqualified notion of an unregulated market as the solution to all our problems is naive; worse, it leads to a mentality that favors the strong and creates a multitude of victims. The disparity between winners and losers is growing by the year. We try to mitigate this troubling fact by telling ourselves that the losers are somehow themselves to blame for their lack of success which is, as this view would have it, the result of their failure to work hard.
This view seeks to reassure “us” that we won’t lose what “we” have by explaining away “their” misfortunes as the result of “their” own irresponsibilty and inaction.
In truth, there is no guarantee that today’s winners will be tomorrow’s winners. The financial sector has demonstrated clearly how even the savings of hard working people can be gambled away virtually overnight. A lack of any substantive regulatory activity, designed to prevent this from happening again in the future, coupled with a lack of holding those responsible accountable, proves that ‘free’ also means that it can not only be done again, but done with impunity.
That we do not want to look this state of affairs in the eye is understandable. It makes us afraid.
Ideologies gain their allure by promising to alleviate our fears. Unfortunately, they also take advantage of them, with someone (or some entity or entities) standing to benefit, who then seek to control the terms of our existence.
There is only one solution, really. We need to be watchful and alert. We need to confront our fearfulness and cultivate courage. Without courage we will not be able to think and act in ways that will lead us to be responsive to need and to assume the responsibility necessary to address it, conceptually and practically. It takes a willingness to be a citizen, rather than a consumer, to take on such a task; it takes embracing the idea of a common good, of civic responsibility and duty. A body politic cannot afford any losers without losing itself.
Christians, in spite of repeated and serious failure to do so, have no excuse for ignoring this insight, for it is fundamental to our understanding of community, of being members of the body of Christ.
Advent is about waiting, watching, and being alert. Observing Advent is no passive exercise! It includes being on the watch for false messiahs, whether in the form of charismatic leaders or ideologies promising ultimate salvation. More importantly, it means looking out for the true Messiah.
From what direction will the true Messiah come?
When Christians say, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we are saying something truly important, something critical. We are confessing:
The one who is coming is the one who identified with the poor and the vulnerable (see Matthew 25: 31-46); the one who is coming is the one who identified with their need; the one who is coming is the one who ultimately, at his return, will identify with us, but only to the extent that we ourselves also identified with and threw in our lot with the poor and the vulnerable, with him.
Come, Lord Jesus, come!
