A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on December 13th, 2007 in Progressive Faith

Apparently, it’s the day of the rooster. The connection of the rooster is to the Feast of St. Lucy, and you can read about that (including Lucy Cats) here.

At first blush, the part of today’s Gospel that strikes me is:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

And also:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.

Yeah, I could spend a year on the political implications of just those two passages. But what does this hold for Advent? What does it mean outside of my obsession with politics?

What I get from it is that it is a call to move away from a strict legalistic interpretation of scriptures. It isn’t sufficient to just say, “This is what is written, so this is what I do.” It means that we have to bring the scriptures into our present-day world and find the deeper intent of scriptures. It means that imposing a strict literal translation of the legal scriptures doesn’t lead to the freedom of truth, but the enslavement of the converted.

The first part also reminds me of a very common critique I have of Christian churches – that they will spare no expense to send missionaries around the world, but getting them to help someone across town isn’t so easy. See also: This comment thread concerning the shootings in Colorado Springs.

What does this mean for me during Advent? Preparation for the “Light of the World” is about more than just “doing the right things”. Focusing on that just makes people hate Christmas.

The other day, my wife was telling me that a co-worker was shocked (SHOCKED!) to discover that we won’t have a Christmas tree this year (again!). There are a lot of reasons – 1) we have a very small place; 2) we have two little boys who would love to see how often they could pull a tree down on top of themselves; 3) it seems kind of silly to kill a tree just to decorate the house for a few weeks; 4) insert one of a few dozen reasons here. But Christmas will come and go with one less tree in Jersey City. It always has. What is important is that our family will be together, we will be at peace, and we will be receptive to the miracle of love that unites us.

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