Second Week of Advent, 2017

Last night’s reading from Walter Brueggemann’s Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent (2017) reflects on God’s steadfast love, “a term always on the lips of ancient Israel, a term that most fully characterizes the God of Christmas for whom we prepare in Advent” (24). Hesed is difficult to translate because its meaning is so rich. For example, it appears twice in Psalm 25:6-7 and has a range of translations:

NRSV (Brueggemann’s choice)
Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love,
    for they have been from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
    according to your steadfast love remember me,
    for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!

CEB

LORD, remember your compassion and faithful love -

   they are forever!

But don’t remember the sins of my youth or my wrongdoing.

   Remember me only according to your faithful love

   for the sake of your goodness, LORD.

KJV

Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindness;

   for they have been ever of old.

Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions:

   according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O LORD.

NASB

Remember, O LORD, Your compassion and Your lovingkindness, 

   For they have been from of old. 

Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; 

   According to Your lovingkindness remember me, 

   For Your goodness’ sake, O LORD.

NIV

Remember, LORD, your great mercy and love, 

   for they are from of old. 

Do not remember the sins of my youth
   and my rebellious ways; 

according to your love remember me,
   for you, LORD, are good.

Too often “love” gets watered down in our vocabulary to refer to warm, fuzzy feelings one person has toward another yet without much substance. So how do we understand the nature of God’s love? Kind, faithful, steadfast, merciful. Still, these descriptors still seem lackluster. In our world it is easy to lose sight of what faithful or kind or merciful looks like, so again we resort to boiling down what should be active and dynamic to a feeling that comes and goes. Our inability to practice love wholeheartedly and consistently with one another corrodes our understanding of God’s love. So many people have given up on God because they can no longer see God’s love, and tragically, they can no longer see God’s love because of the lack of love offered by God’s people.

Brueggemann fleshes out the meaning of hesed: “Steadfast love means solidarity in need enacted with transformative strength… What human persons and human community most need is abiding, committed, passionate transformative solidarity” (24). Though he admits that our world does not readily extend this solidarity, he invites us to:

Imagine a whole company of believers rethinking their lives, redeploying their energy, reassessing their purposes. The path is to love God, not party, not ideology, not pet project, but God’s will for steadfast love that is not deterred by fear and anxiety. The path is to love neighbor, to love neighbor face-to-face, to love neighbor in systemic arrangements, in imaginative policies… It will take a village to exhibit this alternative, and we are citizens of that coming society. (25)

This Advent, I am longing for God’s steadfast love to break into the lives of his people in powerful ways that will liberate us to enact transformative solidarity with our neighbors…

… those shivering through the night without a home 

.… those hungry for a meal when so much feasting surrounds them 

.… those grieving the loss of a loved one who used to bring such joy during the holidays 

.… those maligned and attacked for beliefs that do not say, “Merry Christmas.” 

… those afraid to come forward to expose the abuse they have suffered, and 

… those facing further abuse for telling their stories #metoo 

.… those rejected by family, friends and church communities because of who they love 

.… those marginalized by individuals and systems of power for not being white.

Most holy and merciful Father:

We confess to you and to one another,

and to the whole communion of saints

in heaven and on earth,

that we have sinned by our own fault

in thought, word, and deed;

by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

 

We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.

Have mercy on us, Lord.

(Litany of Penitence)