Advent is a time when we remember the promises of God, which we do by retelling the Christmas story.
This is the story of a God who promised to fulfill humanity's ancient longing to restore harmony to the world and to restore all that had been disordered.
It began with the birth of a child so unimportant that the only people who noticed were his parents, and a group of ruffians. When the child's parents took him to the Temple to dedicate him eight days later, amid the hustle and bustle and the jostling of the crowds only two other people are said to have noticed anything unusual: an old man, and an old woman, who each had been waiting their entire lives to see this child born.
The gospel of Luke tells us that Simeon and the prophetess Anna declared that the infant would do great things, that he would honor the weak and the downtrodden and bring ruin to the mighty.
This is what the people expected the messiah to do, after all. As he ushered in the Apocalypse, he would free prisoners, give the outcast a place of honor at the feast, and bring to an end the haughty and the powerful.
That Jesus was born is a sign that God is committed to honoring the promise he made to us in the myth-time, to overthrow oppression, to reveal money for the lie it is, to confound the wise and to leave the mighty confounded in their places. That's why the leaders of the day killed him.
The Resurrection is a further promise that it doesn't end there. If death has no power, neither do the dictator and thugs who tell us to trust them as they harass refugees at the border, who threaten their critics, or who oppress people of color on a daily basis.
You can't silence Truth when it won't stay dead.
"Stories are a promise," someone once said. "They are a promise that the ending is worth waiting for."
