An Advent Meditation on Justice

 What follows is an Advent meditation which was shared today with my brothers and sisters in the Lindisfarne Community.  May it be a blessing to others.

Brothers and Sisters,

Many of us are deeply troubled by the violence in our streets.  Race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, even religion, all the things we thought back in the 60s and 70s that we'd confronted and named and faced down seem to be roaring back with a vengeance to divide God's beloved children into warring camps. And yet, the very word, religion, comes from a root that means to bind back together what has been separated.
 

I have a torn ligament (ligio) in my hand that has never healed properly, and as a result, I require a brace to re-bind the joint so that I can use my hand adequately.  There will always be things I cannot do, and my only surgical recourse would involve permanently immobilizing one of the joints in my thumb.  Most of the time I don't have much pain, but as soon as I go without the brace -- just to wash my hands, or put on a little hand cream -- the joints remind me that they are injured and weak, and can't do their work on their own.

How is any of this relevant?  I'm wondering to what extent we have become weak joints in the Body of Christ.  I'm wondering what has happened to the human community, individually and collectively, that makes it so difficult, so painful, to hold together and work cooperatively.  I am wondering what kind of damage has been done, and continues to be done, out of fear, or carelessness, or despair, that leaves us believing that things may never change.

Thank God it is Advent -- the Coming.  There is a Holy Brace, a Divine Surgeon, a Someone who knows, who understands, who hurts with us and can heal us, in small injuries and in gaping social wounds.  God's Self is among us and within us, inhabiting the torn and wounded world that so desperately needs a healing touch.  As our brother Jack said so eloquently in his recent blog post, sometimes when we don't see Christ in a situation it is because we are called to be Christ in that moment.

Christ is Coming.  WE are coming into Christ-like-ness.  May this Advent be the moment in which we are mobilized by justice and compassion to march in the streets, defend our black and Latina/o and gay and under/unemployed brothers and sisters, flip some tables in somebody's temple, and otherwise be Holy Healers for the sake of the Holy Child