Yet we might instead say that our God has lasted (where others could not) precisely because of God’s transcendence. The many-gods of old might have been more “relatable”, but being human-like also means being subject to life within a span. They were also like us in that they could not last; there’s no god among the Greek pantheon, for example, who could claim our love in the way that God does. Our early Advent readings this week remind us of why.
We’ve never wanted our God to be “like” us: subject to faltering and mistakes, prone to anger or pettiness. The God we love is a figure we aspire to be like, maybe. Our God is one who warrants our love precisely because all of our faults wash away in the figure of God: human imperfections don’t exist in heaven. What is able to remain is divinity, a creator who loves us; a figure who doesn’t exactly moralize, but who instead, in godly love, inspires us to aspire to be more god-like. Such aspirations don’t imply reaching for great power, or grandeur above others; it’s what’s “moral” in God that we love and want to emulate.
The prophet Isaiah anticipated a salvation figure arising among men who was almost god-like. Some have called this anticipated person the messiah. Isaiah offers some bold specifics, including the Israelite house—the house of Jesse—from which this future figure would come (Isaiah 11:1). But other qualities are drawn more generally, and with a much more hopeful stroke: the spirit of God would rest in this person; they would be a person who would fight, with diligence, on behalf of justice for all who are oppressed; their advent would mark, also, the advent of the end of all strife, the coming of a period in which “the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard…lie down with the kid” (Isaiah 11:2, 4, 6). The age which this person would usher in was anticipated as one in which all kingdoms would bend ears to hear the word of God, to walk in God’s ways and do righteous deeds. A perfect imprint of God, this “shoot from the house of Jesse” would then not alienate us, but by their very presence make us better, make us want to be godly.
We know how Isaiah has been interpreted; in it, the churches have been inclined to see an anticipation of Christ. That’s why Isaiah comes up in our Advent readings, in the season during which we look forward to the “birth of Christ” part of the Christian story. Whether this interpretation is strong or not almost does not matter: Isaiah has seasonal relevance because, in the person of Jesus, all of these grand qualities came into being. Jesus encouraged justice; Jesus encouraged peace; Jesus did his best to incline the world’s ears toward God.
The 72nd Psalm we receive with the same breathless awe, seeing in the future it anticipated the Christian future. The God we want, the Jesus we love, is one of whom we say, both with longing and confidence, “may [God] judge your people with righteousness…defend the cause of the poor…give deliverance….[and] crush the oppressor” (Psalm 72:2-4). We want that, and believe that, God will nourish us like a gentle rain; we believe that a godly age would be marked by a flourishing of peace, by a joyous calm among the nations (Psalm 72:5, 7). Much different from the gods humanity once believed in: the God we know and love is not arbitrary in dolling out demands and decrees, but rather constant in peace and equanimity. This is who we anticipate. This is who we adore.
Romans sees Jesus as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible prophecies, anticipating in the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom all of the wonders which that Bible spoke of. Jesus is the one who leads to the “glorification of God,” who “became a servant” to bring to fruition the “promises to the patriarchs” for the world, entirely (Romans 15:12, 9, 8). Our gospel reading, too, anticipates rather than involves the person of Jesus: John the Baptist informs those who question him that a person is coming who “is more powerful…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11).
We expect our God to be great; we love God partially because, through the person of Jesus and the mystery of incarnation, the divine was able to prove that divinity IS great. We know this because of Jesus, who fulfilled all of the lofty goals of the prophets: who cleared a path for people to treat each other well, for justice to take root, for human good will to be the guiding principle of all behaviors.
God is not, in fact, unappealing because God is moral, or even moralizing; rather, the gods who did not last, the phantasms who lived in stories and passed away with the closing of ancient empires, are unappealing for worship because they didn’t bother to be moral, or to moralize, or to offer any sort of guiding rule to better our humble human lives. Perhaps we think of them now and again, when we need to tell a rich and engaging story; perhaps the line from Matthew which says that “every tree…that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” recalls them for us (Matthew 3:10). Those gods were interesting, but fruitless; so our God is humbling, and awesome, and we’re called to be the fruit which the divine bears.
Our advent readings are a reminder of God’s greatness, and of the wonder of the person of Jesus. They’re perhaps even “moralizing” words, as they encourage us to walk in ways which suggest godly ways. They speak of a perfected world in which God’s people play a significant part, and they know all of us to be those people, and demand of all of us those high deeds. They don’t expect us to do them out of deference, or obligation; rather, the terms in which the gospel and biblical morals are drawn make us, in their beauty, almost want to be more moral, more God-like. “God-like” stirs in us something primordial, something eternal and joyous; “gods-like” never could, and so the thought of it faded into myth.
We’ve entered a season of anticipation. Plenty around us will cynically claim that the holiday season no longer carries this, that “god is dead” within it; but as we encounter Advent passages, we know that this isn’t true. We look forward, with longing, to warm family gatherings; we include, in our shopping lists, strangers and families in need; we make peace with those we’ve maintained subtle feuds with; and all of this hints to the coming kingdom. God flourishes within our seasonal behavior. God becomes apparent in the places and spaces wherein we remember to look for what is fantastic about Heaven, and all its luminaries. God is; God remains; and the wonder of that doesn’t diminish, but only grows stronger as we await the rebirth of Jesus.
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