Tag Archives: shakespeare

Reverend Doctor Advent

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The Advent season is upon us. Not Christmas, but Advent.

“So, what’s the difference?”

Well, there’s a big difference, actually. A person can understand the difference by first admitting that not all teachers are human. Seasons are professors, too. If we’re paying attention, even the earth’s varying seasons teach us something. Ralph Waldo Emerson described summer as a time that teaches us to swim and to drink in the wild air, which is to say, it’s a time for getting out and occupying creation. Conversely, John Steinbeck noted that the value of summer is best known in the depth of winter. Shakespeare added to the wintry lesson, “Here feel we the penalty of Adam, the season’s difference; as, the icy fang.” In other words, we can blame the devilish serpent and Adam for winter.

Again, seasons teach.

I’ll add that the Christians who jump straight from Thanksgiving to Christmas without experiencing the season of Advent are truly missing out on something extraordinary.

Advent means “coming.” When you know someone or something is on the way, you prepare. No small part of the Advent season’s purpose is to stir thoughtful anticipation and to refresh Christianity’s two-fold longing for the arrival of Christ. Here’s what I mean by “two-fold.”

If an Advent pilgrim is paying attention, he’ll first sense Advent’s deep concern for a savior from the perpetual nighttime of Sin and Death. He’ll notice the season’s explicit call to contemplate this unfortunate predicament, and he’ll be urged to look toward a little city with a manger. He’ll be prompted to prepare for Jesus, the One whose incarnation was the very inbreaking of God to save us. He’ll also notice an underlying promise: the One who first came in lowliness won’t return in the same condition. The next time He comes, it will be in glory as the divine Judge over all things. When He returns, He’ll set all things right and take His people to be with Him forever.

Advent ponders these two arrivals. The season is in place to help us, mainly because if left to ourselves, we’ll be enticed toward the first of the two—and this will happen for all the wrong reasons. Setting aside the reality that we are not inheritors of this world but of the world to come, we’ll begin to see Christmas for everything that it isn’t—an opportunity to accumulate things. It becomes little more than a glittering season of commercialism, inevitably resulting in fast-fleeting joy. Advent, by contrast, is designed to exchange the superficial for the depth of a divine event—the breathtaking moment when God actually entered our world to fulfill His promise of salvation, claiming us as His own, and inaugurating a hope and a future that extend far beyond what this temporary world could ever promise or give.

By the way, I should interject and say it’s entirely fine to put up a Christmas tree, string lights on the front porch, and decorate our homes in jolly anticipation during Advent. Some would disagree. I’m not one of those folks. The Thoma family put up their festive decorations the weekend before Thanksgiving. For one, we had to. It was the only weekend we’d all be around to help accomplish it. Besides, I’m not so rigid as to think these traditions are incapable of adding to the anticipation. They can help prompt the warmth and expectation I mentioned. Still, even as the Christmas tree twinkles and the tiny Dickens-like villages adorn our fireplace mantles, Advent calls us to make sure our hearts remain focused on something that glistens with a brighter shine. Advent’s appointed lessons keep our gaze steady, reminding us that everything we see—the tree, the lights, the gifts we receive at Christmas, whether wrapped or unwrapped—all have an expiration date on them. We might not be able to see it, but it is there. Indeed, this world is passing away (1 John 2:15-17, Matthew 6:19-20, James 4:14, 1 Corinthians 7:31, and the like), and while the surrounding décor might represent a sense of our joy, it’ll only ever be a hint at the unsurpassed joy Christ brought in His birth and will bring again in its fullest at the Last Day.

Advent zeros in on these things. It whispers to the soul, “Prepare in this world for the next. Prepare not just your home but your heart.” It readies us for Jesus, the Divine Gift that does not fade, the Hope that does not diminish, and the Joy that is truly everlasting.

Smiles and Laughter

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School is back in full swing. I know this not only because I see youthful academia’s vibrant commotion swirling into, through, and around every square inch of this church’s school building but also because I can most certainly hear it. Summertime is a quiet time around here. Autumn is not. It’s audibly occupied.

Perhaps the most notable sound is the laughter. Melancholy stands little chance when gleeful children are laughing. And the younger the child, the more potent his or her laughter is. A laughing baby is a room’s own sunshine. Anyone caught in the child’s sparkling beams will be swept up into laughter, too. Even a deaf person will experience it. That’s because a laughing child isn’t just heard but sensed. Anyone unmoved while children are laughing is either unconscious or paralyzed. There can be no other explanation.

Laughter is nuanced, though, isn’t it? It arrives in multiple carriages. I’ve always believed you can learn a lot about people by what they find funny. Life provides plentiful opportunities for humor. Laughing is healthy (Proverbs 15:15, 17:22). Still, a man drawn to filthy humor, laughing at sexually explicit, curse-word-laden comedy rather than disgusted by it, tells you something about him. Unfortunately, there is no age restriction relative to laughter’s sinister side. A playground of happy children running and jumping is one thing. A child who shoves another child and then points and laughs at her scraped knee is another. In such moments, laughter betrays humanity’s darker inclinations.

Since I’m already pondering these dichotomous things, I think smiles work the same way.

Speaking only for myself, a smile offered by a random passerby almost always brings me joy. No matter how I feel before receiving it, a chance smile can only nudge me toward better spirits. I don’t have to know why the person did it. The act is all that was needed.

This changes in other circumstances. Parents know it. While one child endures a parent’s reprimand, a nearby sibling smiles. Something else is happening in those moments. Through the character Donalbain, Shakespeare describes such scenes intuitively, saying, “There’s daggers in men’s smiles.” Sometimes, a smile communicates a gladness for our demise.

I suppose this means that a smile can also serve as a veil. It can be inexact or precise. A person trying to hide disappointment might do so through a passive smile. Staring, arms crossed, and tapping one foot, a smiling wife communicates disgust with her husband’s announced plans for a guys’ night out on her birthday.

The Bible doesn’t say much about God smiling. At least, I don’t know of texts that speak specifically of God smiling. Many folks use the phrase “God smiled on me,” and there are plenty of texts in which His smile might be implied. For example, the Aaronic Benediction in Numbers 6:24-26 comes to mind. There, God promises to shine His face on His people. This certainly has the sense of God’s gracious smile accompanying His compassionate care. Still, the word for shine (אוֹר) really only means to illuminate. In that sense, knowing that Christ is the Light of the world, I’m more inclined to say that God smiles on His people through His Son. Jesus is God’s friendliest glance and kindliest gesture. To see Jesus is to know God’s desire that we would be His friends, not His enemies.

On the other hand, the Bible does tell us that God laughs. Unfortunately, the Lord’s laughter is typically stirred by human foolishness. Indeed, we can be a funny bunch. King David describes sinful humanity’s pompous bellowing and God’s subsequent amusement (Psalm 59:7-8). In other words, God will sometimes laugh (שָׂחַק) at the ones who believe (as the saying goes) they’re “all that and a bag of chips” before Him. These same people tend to act viciously against God’s people, often thinking they’ve gotten the upper hand on us. As a result, God laughs, knowing a final day for vindication is coming (Psalm 37:12-13).

Whether smiling or laughing, the one thing we need to know is that God is not rooting for our destruction or doom (Ezekiel 18:32; Ezekiel 33:11; 1 Timothy 2:4-6; 2 Peter 3:9; Titus 2:11). With that, He does not find enjoyment in our pain. He does not grin at our sadness. He does not delight in losing us. It hurts Him as nothing we’ll ever fully know. This brings us back to Jesus.

God smiled at us at Golgotha when He frowned at Jesus, giving His Son over and into Sin’s deepest dreadfulness. God did this to make us righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). He did this so that we would, by faith in Christ’s sacrifice, know the truest joys found only among heaven’s laughter (Philippians 3:20-21; Romans 6:23).

There’s indeed nothing like the laughter of children. However, nothing will compare to the ruckus made by the joyful children of God wandering the halls of eternal life’s mansion (John 14:2).

Genuine, joy-filled smiles.

Triumphantly authentic laughter.

By the person and work of Jesus Christ, these are guaranteed, and it’ll be impossible not to join in when you get there.

Guilt

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The season of Lent is a powerful time in the Church Year. Throughout its forty days, if there’s one thing in particular it draws out and defines with its penitential crispness, it’s the authenticity of human guilt.

Guilt is an incredibly palpable thing, isn’t it?

It’s thick. It’s strong. It’s voracious.

A terrible task-master, guilt binds its victims, keeping them in chains, all the while haunting every square inch of its chosen domain. As a pastor, I’ve learned to recognize guilt in people—and not because I exist in some sort of sphere of unimpeachable innocence, but because I know and have met my own dreadfulness of thoughts, words, and deeds. I am very familiar with guilt’s shape and stamina, and like you, I can be found wrestling with it, too.

As a pastor who is fully prepared to admit this, that means I’m a lot harder to fool when it comes to guilt.

It’s so often easy enough to see it peering back from its victim’s eyes like a shadowy knight in the watchtower of a guarded fortress. It can be sensed in a person’s physical presence. It disturbs human posture and is betrayed by facial expressions. On the phone or in person, its grip alters the human voice. By email or text message, it chooses certain words and repeats certain phrases that reveal its in-dwelling.

Guilt is by no means shy in these regards. It isn’t necessarily concerned by the possibility of its own notoriety. Admittedly, however, it would prefer to dwell in the peace of secrecy, hoping its host will deny its existence and thereby miss the telltale traces of its acidosis. This is true because it knows that to deny its presence is to preserve and protect the master that planted it—Sin. The denial of Sin’s guilt is the embracing of wickedness. It is to justify it, and to find the license for willfully employing it.

But again, for guilt’s host to be aware of its existence is just as acceptable, too. It quite enjoys its castle adorned in the paraments of hopelessness, fear, anxiety, and depression.

Whether it’s outright disavowal or fearful seclusion to avoid being found out, guilt is happy to live in the pitch black darkness of either. It will do anything to protect its domain, anything to smother the approaching lantern of Truth’s messenger, anything to prevent the invasion of a better, chain-shattering, Lord.

From purely a human perspective, Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a great place for seeing the examination of these two natures of guilt. For example, Queen Gertrude says so frankly of strong denial, “The Lady doth protest too much, methinks” (III, ii). This is hinting that to so boldly defend one’s absolute incorruptibility—to make excuses for or justify one’s bad behavior—is itself evidence of self-deception in relation to guilt. Further into the play, Shakespeare takes aim at the futility of concealing guilt for fear of being found out, saying that eventually it “spills itself in fearing to be spilt” (Act 4, Scene V). In other words, the continued filling of guilt’s ever-swelling balloon can only last for so long before it bursts, ultimately spattering its gore across the landscape of a person’s life. Things will get messy. Little episodes will become big. Plans will come undone.

So, what to do?

There’s a reason Jesus said on occasion, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). He knows that the Word of God—namely, the proclamation of the Gospel—brings what’s needed for Sin. This cure is also, by God’s design, a medicine for the ousting of paralyzing guilt. The first pill in its prescribed regimen of truth is big and hard to swallow, and yet it delivers directly to our insides the very important knowledge-filled remedy that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

The course continues along in a way that moves from concern to sweetness, first urging us not to deny or be fearful of our guilt (1 John 1:8). Both are self-deceptions leading to eternal harm. Instead, we are invited to confess our truest selves and our failings, knowing that God is faithful and just, and He will wash the guilt away (1 John 1:9). His faithfulness is embodied by Jesus, who did not come to condemn us, but to save us (John 3:17). Through faith in Him, we have full access to the throne of God’s grace in every time of need (Hebrews 4:16), being certain that God will receive us—that He will not shame us in our guilt, but rather will help us by taking it away (Isaiah 50:7; Psalm 103:12).

This wonderful routing of guilt from the fortress of Man is on full display in the person and work of Jesus Christ—His cross and empty tomb. It’s there that we see our guilt being heaped upon His shoulders. It’s there that we see our fear and shame infused with His divine body. It’s there that our hope is born, and by faith in His sacrifice and victory, the gates of fault’s domain are kicked open and guilt is dragged to its eternal demise.

You don’t have to be afraid to say you’ve done wrong. God forgives. And by the power of the Holy Spirit at work in His people, offended Christians are prepared to forgive in return.

Let this Gospel be of comfort to you. Better yet, be empowered by it to put away the need to hide your guilt. And whatever you do, don’t deny its existence. Besides, God already knows it’s there, and He desires for us to own this truth, too. Even better, He doesn’t want to leave us in it. He would have us look to and know the One He sent for our rescue—Jesus Christ—and in Him discover the mettle for coming clean, for real repentance, for the real receiving of the mercy won for us on Calvary’s cross. It is by confession of Sin and faith in Christ that guilt’s shame is turned back on itself and made into nothing.

Lent is teaching us these things. Lent is leading us to Good Friday and Easter—those eternal moments on the mortal timeline that seal the deal on this wonderful news.