“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”
These words were penned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from the confines of a Nazi concentration camp and they serve as a potent reminder for me this time of year that Advent is, indeed, the season of waiting and of expectation. I have also found that Advent is a time to reflect on the great divide between what I want and what I have. Some may read those words and fume in frustration that I have fallen prey to the same disease our entire country seems to be caught up in this time of year, reflecting on what I want and what I don’t have. Yet, what I am speaking about here is not longing for the newest Apple product, slippers, or another book to set on the coffee table, but those parts of my own life that still appear to be so far from anything that God could have ever intended for me. The bent and crooked parts. The twisted and misshapen parts that have never seemed to resemble anything close to the types of parts that could be of use to anyone. Broken parts, spare parts, and absent parts that make me wonder if, perhaps, I left the factory before I passed through quality control.
These long, grey days of winter lend credibility to Bonhoeffer’s analogy of Advent to a prison cell, which appears in these hours to be more honest and accurate than any would suggest at first glance. Indeed, Advent has the ability, if we let it, to reveal the tension of the “now and not yet” reality we find ourselves in, and the reality that we find inside ourselves. It is fitting because freedom feels so elusive for me, as it does for many others. Peering over my shoulder at the last year I always recognize with a startling clarity just how few my steps have been these past twelve months, and how much further I have left to go. Perhaps this is precisely why so many of us will find ourselves making new resolutions within a week of celebrating the birth of Christ, for Christmas marks both a beginning and end for each of us. It is the year-end evaluation that meets each of us like cold morning air that burns nostrils as we inhale. It marks another year of finding myself, like the Pagan astrologers from the east some 2,000 years ago, falling prostrate before the tiny feet of the God-child to worship, knowing full well that the gifts I have brought him are wholly inadequate.
But, as Bonhoeffer reminds us, Advent is also a type of prison cell in that it is a living reminder that “freedom has to be opened from the outside.” Not only from the outside, but only by the hand of a Jewish child reaching from the rough-hewn edges of a feeding trough. May this Advent season be marked, for each of us, by the great hope that this same child comes again this year to a broken and troubled world and, with nail pierced hands, stands ready to offer freedom again for the prisoners.
