Advent (Adveniat Regnum Tuum)

Once a Pharisee;

What did you see?

That the sun only shines on the righteous,

That the strong will inherit the earth,

That all weakness must crumble in terrors

And that thinking has limited worth?

Once a Pharisee;

But then you saw

A vast and furious field of what

Is humanly fair to know,

Of episteme, mind and thought.

Admiration, honour, and awe

Were in your mirrored path.

And what did you see?

The road to a sceptic wrath -

The road of the Sadducee.

Once a Sadducee

What did you see?

Or rather, what did you not?

Evading eternity,

You turned our gaze to prod

Into substance, devoid of God.

So, where does it lead,

this path of yours?

And where do your leaders go?

From ditch to ditch,

On a narrow trail,

You stumble, as darkness grows.

But rest assure,

The dawn is coming!

This light will outshine any doubt.

The King of Heaven

Is approaching,

Revealed in word, in deed, in might!

Beyond the scope of human reason,

Mindful labour, and despair,

There is our King,

Forgiving treason -

Reaching out, and coming near.

Real and regal, He is here!

I wrote this poem in a response to a discussion in Dec. 2014, but then it felt too impertinent to use the direct address 'you/your'' and I used 'we/our'. Now, about a year later, I like the original intention.

       Being brought up in a Christian setting does not guarantee the personal relationship to Jesus, but it facilitates it. Sometimes we have all the outer frames, all the right  attitudes which would define us as Christians, but still there is a hollow sense of not being real. The self understanding as a Christian is based, not so much on Gods strength as one's own. In such a frame we resemble the Pharisee in the New testament. We know what is right and good, and we do our best to adhere to it. However, there are struggles in the soul, temptations and reactions that emerge - but are held under strict control. It is like a heavy lid on top of a fermented mass. It may explode one day. So, as a response, and a deeply felt frustration over this shallow and simplistic, or perhaps rigid, way of life, the option of intellectual and academic approach to faith and life seems desirable. In many ways this aspect is mirrored in the Sadducees in the New Testament. It reflects much of what the so-called 'liberal' Christianity produces: mostly deflections, away from God, where the human efforts in historical sciences and in different theories of interpretation attack the authority of the Word.  In the end, it is the real encounter with Jesus, the King of Heaven and Earth, which will make a definitive difference in one's life.

       We may go through different stages as we live and learn, but in the end it is not our own processes and progress which are most important, but the reality of God.