Advent: The Faith to Scream “It’s Not Okay!”

She sat in total shock. Her head rested in her hands as her long hair hid her face. She was silent for forty-five minutes. And then the river of tears began to flow.

It was the most traumatic event I’ve experienced in ten years of ministry. The pain and distress of a murdered family member were unbearable.

As she wept uncontrollably, her sister stepped into the void to hold her. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” her sister gently encouraged.

“No! It’s not okay! It’s not okay! It’s not okay!”

Those were the words that struck me that night. In the face of horror, trauma, and evil, the most faithful thing to do is to protest, to scream, “It’s not okay!”

Christians are in the midst of the Advent season. The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “an arrival or coming, especially one which is awaited.”

During Advent, Christians anticipate celebrating the first coming of Jesus at Christmas and we await his second coming when Jesus will set the world right. Since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” as the Letter to the Hebrews teaches, we know that some ideas about the second coming are wrong. Jesus won’t come again with a heavenly military and guns blazing to kill the “bad guys.” No. Jesus will come again to set the world right in the same way he came the first time – with God’s unconditional, universal, and nonviolent love.

Until then, we need to have the bold and subversive faith to protest. Advent faith doesn’t ignore the darkness of the world. It claims the world’s violence is not okay. But Advent doesn’t just protest. The Advent wreath is a symbol that the light shines in the darkness. Advent faith shines a light in the darkness by working through God’s unconditional, universal, and nonviolent love to participate in helping to make the world right.

Unfortunately, many of us have come to accept violence. Another school shooting? Terrorists holding people hostage? Another “casualty of war”? Police officers abusing their power? Continued racism? “Ah,” we apathetically respond. “It’s horrible. But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just how the world works.”

Others have a different response. We want to get the bastards! Violence rules the day and spreads like a contagious disease. As Ren Girard states in his book The One By Whom Scandal Comes, “People everywhere today are exposed to a contagion of violence that perpetuates cycles of vengeance.” These are the rules of violence and we play by the rules. We respond to violence with vengeance, only to lead the world deeper into future of apocalyptic destruction.

But Advent protests. It says no to apathy and to vengeance. Advent awaits the One who changed the world forever because he wasn’t apathetic. He refused to believe that violence is just how the world works. Rather, he challenged violence at its core precisely because he didn’t play by its rules. He played by a different set of rules – the Kingdom of God. Advent faith takes seriously Jesus’ command to forgive one another and turn the other cheek, not because we’re weak doormats, but because we’re rebels who disobey the rules of violence with a completely different set of rules: The nonviolent love of the Kingdom of God.

Like a girl weeping in the midst of a traumatic experience, Advent looks at the violence in the world and refuses to accept it. Advent faith proclaims, “No! It’s not okay. The light shines in the darkness. A better world is possible.”