by Chris D’Angelo

Over the Christmas holidays, my wife, Lindsey and I decided that we should get out of town for a few days. After a bit of discussion about where we might go, I convinced Lindsey that we should make the trip four hours down the 401 to Detroit (a city that you may not be aware was once dubbed the Paris of the Mid-West). Appropriately then, our plan was to gaze at cultural artifacts until exhaustion set in and visit a few of the city’s most delicious local restaurants and bakeries.
While we were there we made sure to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts where we came across a photography exhibition entitled, Detroit Revealed. This exhibition was put together from the work of a diversity of photographers with the aim of shedding light on life in Detroit during the past decade, a time described as being characterized by unique challenges that continue to influence the landscape and society of Detroit in the post-automotive era.

In fact, the challenges that have shaped Detroit in the past decade are mostly a continuation of the same kinds of challenges that have confronted Detroit, and similar manufacturing cities in the American rustbelt, for more than fifty years. Aggressive, breakneck industrialization and economic growth from the turn of the twentieth century through the roaring twenties meant jobs, and lots of them. And as people migrated in search of a decent wage, the city experienced a building boom of houses, schools, places of business, beautiful modern factories and opulent skyscrapers.

Yet, Detroit and cities like it eventually became sites of precipitous post-war job losses, ongoing racial and class conflict, riots, white flight, government corruption, misguided attempts at urban renewal, gang violence, and grinding poverty. The result, for Detroit, has been that it now has an official unemployment rate close to 30% (which some believe is actually closer to 50%) and a decline of population from close to two million people in 1950, to close to 700 000 in the most recent tally.

What this looks like in terms of the physical geography of the city is that this is a place with thousands and thousands of abandoned buildings.

In Detroit, to use Isaiah’s words, many houses are desolate, even large and beautiful ones without inhabitant. In many parts of the city, in fact, abandoned houses have long since been scrapped or demolished leaving vacant fields where neighbourhoods once stood, what some have begun to call urban prairies.

It is also a place where, in terms of productivity, what is now produced within the city is a pittance of the once enormous yield of manufactured goods that once flowed from the Motor City to all parts of America. To apply an agrarian metaphor to an industrial situation, indeed a homer of seed now yields a mere ephah.

In the Detroit Revealed photography exhibition there were predictably pictures of decaying factories and disappearing neighbourhoods. There were also images that portrayed the city’s diverse inhabitants and small-scale attempts to rebuild. But one image in particular, jumped back to mind as I read Isaiah 5.8-17.

It was a picture taken at a working farm at the Catherine Ferguson Academy on Detroit’s westside, a charter school for teenage mothers which incorporates farm work into the life of the school. The image that sprang to mind was a photograph of a sheep that literally grazes as in pasture among the ruins of Detroit.

You see, the urban farm at the school where the sheep is kept is located not far from both the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount where the 1967 riots broke out and also not far from the icon of Detroit’s decay: the hulking, beaux-arts Michigan Central Station which has been left to rot since the last Amtrak train departed in the late eighties.

The farm at the Catherine Ferguson academy is emblematic of the hope that as one set of purposes for the ordering of city life continues to pass away, another might emerge in its place and that Detroit might become the first truly post-industrial green city. Although the extent to which people have begun to grow their own food in the city is encouraging, the full measure to which this kind of vision might actually come to be realized remains to be seen.

Yet, especially given the way that modern cities have been intentionally set-up to reinforce a sharp division between rural and urban, the image of a grazing sheep amongst the ruins of Detroit is a prophetic one. It encourages the sort of imagination that we need to envision the possibilities for how life in particular places with particular stories and particular wounds might more fully align with God’s desire for the flourishing of urban life.

In this passage from Isaiah, the prophet encourages us to see that when one way of living upon the land ends in destruction and desolation, the holy God of justice and righteousness has a desire to return the land to productive use. The opening section speaks of a people who join house to house, and field to field, until there is no room for anyone but themselves. The result is humiliation, starvation, thirst, the fruitlessness of the land and ultimately the loss of what has been so unwisely sought after in the first place.

Yet, in the end, we are told that lambs, fatlings and kids, shall feed among the ruins that remain as reminders of this unsustainable way of life. The land that once yielded so little and led to a deadening isolation as people sought to voraciously acquire buildings and space will be the place where domesticated animals become nourished and fattened.

Although human beings are capable of forgetting what the land is meant to be for and thereby greatly misusing it, there is a sense in which we cannot wholly frustrate God’s intentions for the productivity and fruitfulness of it.

We do well to remember that in the Old Testament, as Wendell Berry points out (especially in the essay, “The Gift of Good Land” found in The Art of the Commonplace edited by Norman Wirzba) land is understood as a sheer gift, not a free or a deserved one, but a gift given upon certain rigorous conditions.

It is a gift because the people who are to possess it did not create it. And, as a result, the gift is given along with careful warnings against the human tendency towards hubris and warnings against the folly of claiming that “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth” (Deut 8:17). Indeed, it is stated unequivocally and repeated again and again in the Old Testament, “that heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it” (Deut 10:14).

What is given is not ownership, but a sort of tenancy, the gift of habitation and use: ‘The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants” (Lev 25:23). And the gift of blessed habitation and use is dependent upon Israel’s willingness to honour their Creator, to honour the limited carrying capacity of the land and willingness to care for those most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan and the alien in their use of the land.

It is also worth noting that the way that the Bible speaks about the challenge of living faithfully in an urban context is always set in the more comprehensive context living faithfully in possession of land. Although we might be inclined to think about rural and urban life as constituting entirely separate settings and lifestyles, Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis encourages us to recognize that this mindset would have been completely foreign to the prophets.

Given the way that ancient Israelite cities functioned, there was simply no such thing as the sort of deep rural-urban divide of the kind that industrialization has established so firmly that it now seems inevitable. As a result, in her recent book, Scripture, Culture and Agriculture, Davis encourages us to appreciate the extent to which the Old Testament holds a vision of the interdependence of cities and their surrounding area. She also encourages us to realize that the writers of the Old Testament would have presumed that a flourishing city would include urban agriculture and animal husbandry within its boundaries too.

Not surprisingly, therefore, when listing the blessings promised to Israel if they remain faithful in covenant with the Lord in Deuteronomy, Israel is told: “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field” (Deut 28:3). In biblical faith, “Blessing…is a kind of ecological phenomenon; it connects God and creatures in a complex of interlocking relationships” (Davis, Scripture, Culture and Agriculture, 164).

There is no such thing as blessing without the fruitfulness and integrity of the many interrelating, mutually supporting parts that were deemed to be part of the goodness of creation. And so, voracious appropriation by the few of potentially habitable dwellings and acres of potentially workable land is not the action of those who regard the deeds of the Lord or see the work of his hands.

Nor is revelling in drunkenness and feasts without recognizing that the joyous gifts of food and drink are ultimately the sacred gifts of the loving, creative work of God.

The fact of the matter is that our thinking about cities must return to an appreciation of the way that urban health and vitality is no less an agricultural concern for us than for the biblical writers. After all, even though we might live in cities we still have to eat. In places like Detroit, it may be that the greater flourishing of the city depends upon making use of the agricultural possibilities associated with having lots of unused space and a high rate of unemployment.

In places like the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), it may be that we need to more fully embrace a compact lifestyle in order to ensure that land is preserved for larger scale food production in some proximity to the city (particularly if we are inclined to want one- or two- acre properties complete with a patio, pool and gigantic perfectly manicured lawn). Or it may mean that we need to become more knowledgeable about the food systems that sustain our urban existence (since we tend to be so cut off from them) so that we urbanites might take responsibility for the way that land is used to feed us well outside of the boundaries of our city.

Or, maybe it would mean trying once again to support efforts aimed at encouraging the limited use of animal husbandry within the city by advocating to have the ban on backyard chickens lifted.

As we go forth into the world attempting to live faithfully in the city, let us give thanks to the creator God who desires the flourishing of urban life, even despite and beyond the waste, folly and isolation that have characterized so much of our human story upon the land here in North America.

Let us give thanks to the God who sends us prophets to provoke the imagining of new ways of living in place in a manner that brings glory and praise to the Creator and joy to one another. Amen.

by Brian Walsh

It always comes back to creation and exodus.

Figure out Genesis and Exodus and you’ve got the most foundational outline of the biblical story.

And when the biblical imagination takes a redemptive turn,
…when a prophet moves from judgment to hope,
…and the biblical narrative transitions from the ruins to rebuilding,
…there are two themes that will pretty much always be found:
……creation and liberation.

We’ve heard so much bad news from Isaiah,
…so much condemnation on the Holy City of Jerusalem,
…that I didn’t have the heart to read Isaiah 3 to the community this morning.

The poet’s depiction of the collapse of all societal and civilizational structures and supports,
…his portrayal of a community devoid of any leadership,
…his condemnation – yet again – of the oppression of the poor,
…his denunciation of opulent luxury,
…and his provocative picture of the smell of perfume being overpowered by the stench of death,
……the sashes that the fine ladies wore around their wastes become ropes for their necks,
……their beautiful hair gives way to baldness,
……their rich robes become sackcloth,
……and instead of beauty they are adorned with shame,
all of this just seemed like too much.

And then, when the passage ends with there being so many dead amongst the men that the women clamour around the remaining few men begging to be known by their name, begging to be taken into their families, so they won’t be left destitute and alone, well, it’s all so degrading and embarrassing.

And almost as if he knows that this can’t go on any longer,
…as if he knows that his hearers can’t handle this any more,
the prophet leaves poetry behind and writes some hope-filled prose.
But it is no less rich and nuanced for being prose rather than poetry.

And it all comes back to Genesis and Exodus, creation and liberation.

In his vision of restoration, the prophet remembers the beauty and fruitfulness of the land that we first meet in the creation narratives.

Indeed, he uses the word “create” for what God is about to do,
…God will create something new in the ruins of the devastated city.
And this act of new creation will deal with the filth, the death, the shame of the past.
…The bloodstains – both evoking the ritual uncleanliness of menstrual blood and the literal reality of the blood of war that has stained the streets of the city – will all be cleaned.
…And it is the Lord God himself, the Holy One of Israel, who will get down on his hands and knees and scrub those streets clean.
…This is new creation, but new creation always comes at a cost,
……a cost to the Holy One,
……a cost paid, in the end, by God.

And then, the prophet weds together the language of creation with the language of exodus.

…“Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night.”

…That’s got to ring some bells.
…A cloud by day and a fire by night.
…These are, of course, strong exodus images.

If there is to be hope for the city,
…if there is to be rebuilding in the ruins,
…if there is to be an urban renewal that will go deep enough to deal with the urban rot and corruption,
…then there must be a new exodus.

There is no new creation without a new exodus.
There is no city of God without liberation from the empire
…that has held the city captive.
This vision of a new city, this theology of urban ministry,
this hope for beauty to arise out of the ashes,
is not a vision of arrival, but of departure.

The prophet here tells us that there is a new exodus on offer,
…a new path of liberation,
…a new journey that is tenuous, long and dangerous,
…but that is led by nothing less than the cloud by day and the fire by night.

If the picture of judgment is one of the defied and insulted glory of God
…abandoning his people and giving them over to judgment,
then the hope of this new exodus is that the glory returns,
…God’s presence accompanies them on this journey,
…sojourns with them, and takes up residence again in the restored city.

And over the glory, the prophet pictures a canopy.
…A sacred canopy of protection, a place of refuge,
…a shelter from the storm and the rain,
…that replaces the fallen and fraudulently constructed canopy of Israel.

Shelter from the storm,
a sacred canopy of protection,
a place of refuge.

The picture that the prophet paints is very interesting.
…You’ve got this glory, this sense of presence,
……this sense of cultural and religious weight to things,
…and over the glory there is a canopy, a pavilion,
……a shelter from the storm.

Now it seems to me that this sense of glory and canopy is pretty common to the way in which humans shape culture and conceive of their civilizations and cities.

Cities bear their own glory, their own sense of identity,
…their own gravity, their own weight of meaning,
…value and esteem.
Their glory can be found in their accomplishments,
…often celebrated in monuments and events,
but that glory can also be a matter of reputation and fame,
…and it is most often manifest in the built environment of the city,
its towers and neighbourhoods, parks and public buildings.

And over all of this glory, human life lives under a sacred canopy that provides ultimate legitimation and protection for that glory.

Now think about it for a moment.
…The canopy legitimates the glory,
…the canopy protects and justifies the glory.

So if you think of something like fascist architecture,
…together with the well-ordered civic structure of fascist societies,
then the sacred canopy over that fascist glory will be a mythology, a narrative,
…that provides sacred legitimation for this fascist state
and also for the fascist leader.

Or think of the glory of Washington, D.C
…While there a sense of a borrowed glory from ancient Rome in the classic architecture and urban planning of Washington, D.C., there is a glory nonetheless.
…A glory manifest in the monuments, the museums, the Capital building and the White House. The glory of America is palpable when you go to Washington.
…And, of course, that glory all exists under the sacred canopy of American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny and a particular telling of a narrative of exodus from bondage to freedom.

The glory of the city and the sacred canopy of the city will always be mutually supportive.

So here’s the question.
…If the sacred canopy over the city of God is the biblical narrative of creation and exodus,
…if this is a canopy erected by the covenant keeping God who will personally clean the blood from our streets,
…indeed, if this is a canopy that in Jesus Christ is erected in the shadow of the cross where his own blood was shed,
…then what would be the glory of such a city?
…What would the presence of God look like in that city?
…What would the social structures look like?
…What would refuge look like, and who would be given such refuge?

…If there is no going back to the city of judgment,
……with its oppression of the poor,
……it’s ostentatious opulence,
……it’s never ending consumption,
……it’s social, racial and ethnic discrimination,
……it’s built structure of human arrogance,
……and it’s fraudulently constructed canopy of human autonomy,
…then what does this city of God look like?

I don’t know about you, friends,
but my life is pretty much all about looking for that place of refuge,
that shelter from the storm.

I’m right there, looking for this better city, this habitation of God,
…this exodus journey home.
I’m right there, shivering in the cold, slipping under this canopy,
…finding my way into the pavilion, getting warm in the glory.
That’s part of what Wine Before Breakfast is all about.
…A time to come in from the cold,
…a place of refuge,
…a shelter from the storm.

And the canopy over it all is the story of this blood-cleaning God:
……Christ has died,
……Christ has risen,
……Christ will come again.

Under that canopy, and having tasted that glory,
…I long for a city – this city! – to be a place of refuge for the refugee,
…….a place of shelter for those who are most vulnerable,
…….a place that finds its glory
…in the quality of life that is shared by its inhabitants,
…the depth of justice of its social and economic structures,
…and the rich neighourliness of its common life.

So come under the canopy, friends,
let’s build the city of God.
Amen.

Light and life. Darkness and strife. Who was there to see it?

In the beginning, or so the story goes, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, or so the story goes, there was a word.

But what kind of word? What kind of word would it be? And what would this word do? Was there more than word, in the beginning with God? Was there more than one?

Perhaps not just one solitary word, but a couple, a few. Not one, but two or three.

Into the darkness, into the chaos of it all, three words emerged, harmonizing the absurd, with the faithful chorus, “let there be.”

Light and dark, night and day.

“Let there be” heard twice; and firmament, skies, earth and sea are made.

“Let there be,” bright moon and stars, and sun in the skies. Brother sun and sister moon to mark the years, the seasons and days.

“Let there be,” living creatures of every kind, fish and birds fruitfully multiply.

“Let there be,” the earth is full of the goodness of God, animals, livestock and keepers for this unbridled zoo.

And yet this coursing humanity finds itself heading towards calamity, towards life and love, and the deep-seeded vanity that would tear them apart. Leaving the nest, the garden, the communion of saints to roam. To roam incessantly, only to find themselves wandering and yearning for home. A home they’d always hoped for. A home they’d once had.

A home, a gift that was wasted.

A home, a gift they wish they still had.

A meditation on Isaiah 2.5-22

Culture is not optional.

I’m pretty sure that my former colleague, Calvin Seerveld, coined that phrase.

Culture is not optional because there is no such thing as human life together that is not at heart a culture-forming enterprise. Human language, family structures, gender relations, economies, agriculture and creative expression is all culturally founded and culturally formative.

And for ancient Israel, culture making is at the very foundation of human identity. We are mandated to be fruitful, to multiply and to “fill” the earth.

That’s what culture is all about. It is a filling exercise. Not that the earth is empty, but that the human creature has the unique call to fill creation with cultural artifacts, traditions, institutions and relationships that serve to open up creational potentials. My friend Bob Goudzwaard calls this a process of disclosure.

And cities, are a societal, spatial, economic, political and aesthetic concentration of such cultural filling. Cities fill their geographical space with people, with transportation systems, with the arts, with buying and selling, with political structures, with homes and neighbourhoods, celebrations and community.

And so, it seems to me, that just as culture is not optional, so also is urban life not optional. For good or ill, the culture forming creature is invariably also a city-building creature.

Culture is not optional and cities are not optional.

Culture may not be optional, but neither is it determined. There are various ways in which we engage in culture-forming, various ways in which we can build cities. Indeed, there are various ways to engage in cultural and urban ‘filling.’

For example, if you fill your cities with fossil fuel burning automobiles, paving vast tracks of the land and prioritizing the automobile over public transit, bicycles, and pedestrian traffic, then you will create a noisy and smelly city with poor air quality that will be decidedly inhospitable to human species on foot and other species on wing. And this automotive filling of your city will have devastating implications for neighbourhood life (if you don’t walk, you don’t meet your neighbours), health and safety (just look at the statistics on injury and death, not to mention respiratory disease because of the car) and the city budget (the infrastructure for the automobile is decidedly more expensive than that of other modes of transportation).

Not all urban ‘filling’ is created equal. Indeed, much urban filling is decidedly deformative, closing down a rich urban life of diverse communities in a city that is socially, economically, ecological and culturally fruitful and sustainable.

And that is precisely what Isaiah is on about in our this text that hardly ever gets any attention.

The prophet perceives a city that is full.

There are the intellectual elite from various cultures, serving as advisors to the ruling authorities. The city is full of these consultants, all paid a handsome wage.

That they are earning their keep is evidenced by the economic wealth of this city. It is full of silver and gold, there is no end to their treasures. Isn’t that what cities are all about? Civic machines that generate wealth for the economic elite?

And once you’ve got that kind of wealth around, well then, of course you will need a strong police and military establishment in order to protect those treasures and those who hold that wealth.

But this prophet sees more.

This prophet sees past the shining towers of the financial district and the proliferation of condos for the wealthy while homelessness continues to plague thousands in his city.

He sees past the well-spoken educated classes with their fine economic analysis and cultural tastes, while the poor continue to struggle with literacy.

He sees past the rhetoric of tax reductions for the owners of cars and the smoke of budget cuts to libraries, homeless shelters and other social services.

He sees past the security establishment that keeps the G20 protestors in their place.

He sees past the ideology of the ruling classes with their endless treasures and security apparatus.

He sees past all of this and sees a city full not only of soothsayers, gold, horses and chariots – this is a city full of idols.

Humans are created in the image of God and called to fill the earth. If, in sin, we choose not to image God, we will still fill the earth.

Remember, culture is not optional.

But we will fill the earth, construct our culture, and fill our cities in the image of idols.

If we do not image God, then we will necessarily and inevitably bow the knee, subject our lives and construct our cities in service of graven images.

Call this “Biblical Anthropology 101.”

So far, this prophet is just a man with clear vision.

Anyone with eyes could see that this city had bowed the knee to idols in its urban planning, its priorities, its understanding of what makes for a ‘world class city.’

Anyone could see that lying behind that self-interested ideology, civic self-aggrandizement, and urban planning for myopic economic growth was idolatry.

But this prophet sees even more.

In the face of this world class city of education, wealth and security, in the face of this city full of idols, the prophet conjures up an impossible scenario.

It all comes crumbling down.
In a series of prophetic reversals the haughty eye is brought low,
…the proud and arrogant are humbled.

“It’s time for the horizons of the universe to be glimpsed even by the faceless kings of corporations” – and in that glimpse, it all comes crashing down.

“It’s time for chaos to win and walk off with the prize which turns out to be nothing.”

The civilizational order of this city, built as it is on idolatry, will collapse and chaos will reign.

Why? Why can’t such an urban experiment succeed?

Why?

Because God aligns himself against this city in all of its splendour,
…against this culture in all of its beauty,
…against this economy in all of its wealth,
…against this built environment in all of its arrogance.

Ten times, the prophet repeats that word – against, against, against.

And beyond the range of normal sight in this city of idolatry, the prophet sees that “the idols shall utterly pass away.”

These idols that exude such power, such permanence, such authority, will utterly pass away.

They will be so useless that when the collapse comes, when the arrogant and powerful are looking for a hole to crawl into, they’ll have to throw away their idols to the moles and the bats.

Empty handed, they will leave these unclean symbols of cultural filling for the pleasure of unclean animals. That’s all that they will be good for.

So culture is not optional.
And cities are not optional either.
But that means that we must struggle to maintain real options for our cultural and urban lives.
…Real options for a sustainable city.
…Real options for the shaping of communities of neighbourliness.
…Real options for a city full of creativity and imagination.
…Real options for a city of justice for the most marginalized.
…Real options for democratic freedom of expression.
…Real options for homemaking in secure housing.
…Real options for those excluded from power and opportunity.
…Real options for kids to play, to learn, to grow.

Culture is not optional, but idolatry will always close down our real options.

And so the prophet offers an alternative:

O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the Lord. (Is. 2.5).

Culture is not optional and urban life is not optional.

Let us be a people who seek the shalom of the city,
who seek a city of peace,
and who will build the city of God, in the light of the Lord,
in the light of his Word.

Republished with permission from www.huffingtonpost.com

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward

These lines, from Bruce Cockburn’s hauntingly beautiful song “Pacing the Cage,” have been my constant companions as I have been reflecting on the year that was and the year that is to come. As the sun sets on another year of violence on the battlefields of war and urban conflict, another year of ecological despoliation coupled with economic greed, another year of political duplicity and media distraction, you can see the blood everywhere.

Maybe you can see an angel weeping, holding out a bloody sword. Weeping over the blood stained year that has passed. Weeping over that sword of judgment still gripped in his hand. There is blood on that sword, but it has not finished its violent judgment. There is more to come and no matter how the artist squints, he cannot discern where that sword is now pointing. Maybe he doesn’t want to know. But whatever the reason, Cockburn then sings,

Sometimes you feel like you’ve lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

There is a world weariness to it all. One damn year of violence after another. When you’ve seen so much blood over the years, and you are either too confused or too numb to make any sense of it, well, “you catch yourself / pacing the cage.”

In an earlier song, reflecting on another sunset, this Canadian singer/songwriter described a world “ill at ease,” a “fraying rope getting closer to breaking” (“Hills of Morning”). And while folks kept on “moving back and forth / in between effect and cause” the artist had another vision. “Just beyond the range of normal sight” he saw “this glittering joker dancing in the dragon’s jaws.”

“Just beyond the range of normal sight.” That is what Walter Brueggemann calls “a prophetic imagination.” A vision that goes beyond what is seen to the naked eye. A vision that discerns the spirit of the times, the deep dynamics of history, and maybe even the movement of God.

Such prophetic vision is often found in the poetry of song and Bruce Cockburn’s art is suffused with a prophetic imagination. Cockburn’s art is prophetic in Brueggemann’s sense of the term because it nurtures, nourishes and evokes “a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture” (“The Prophetic Imagination,” p. 3). Whether naming the reality of trickle down economics as “trickle down blood” (“Trickle Down”), identifying the administration of George W. Bush as the village idiot who “takes the throne” (“All Our Dark Tomorrows”), deconstructing what they “call” democracy as “modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom” (“Call it Democracy”) or more evocatively naming our malaise as “hooked on avarice” (“Trickle Down”) because humans have this tragic disposition to “create what destroys / bind ourselves to betray” (“Beautiful Creatures”), Cockburn’s art has always seen “just beyond the range of normal sight.”

And with countless others, Cockburn’s songs have often given me a glimpse beyond the normal. A glimpse that sometimes breaks through my culturally imposed numbness, sometimes allows me to hear “rumours of glory” in the midst of the betrayal and ruins (“Rumours of Glory”), sometimes reminds me of the mystery that is at the heart of things.

With Cockburn I have sometimes been able to identify my deepest longings — personally, culturally, economically and ecologically — as “waiting for a miracle.”

Struggle for a dollar, scuffle for a dime
Step out from the past and try to hold the line
So how come history takes such a long, long time
When you’re waiting for a miracle

So how come history takes such a long, long time — when you are longing for personal wholeness, when you are looking for a world in which the 1 percent do not rule the 99 percent, when you are hoping for sanity to prevail over self-interested ideology in the affairs of state, when you are struggling to find meaningful work and dignity for your neighborhood youth, when you are praying that the church be released from her cultural captivity — when you are waiting for a miracle?

Perhaps it is out of such impatient longing and waiting, out of a crying out “how long, Lord? How long, must we wait for a miracle?” that I now look at that “angel weeping, holding out a bloody sword” and I can’t for the life of me make any sense of it all. No matter how I squint I can’t discern the meaning of this violence, and I sure as hell can’t see where the blood will flow next.

And yet Cockburn’s music will not leave us lost in such disorientation. He will not leave us with this “ache in the spirit / we label despair” (“Beautiful Creatures”). As an artist with a prophetic imagination, he will not avert his gaze from the brokenness, he will not cover up the disappointments, but he also will not leave us without hope. That’s what prophets do. They criticize and dismantle what is, in order to energize us with an alternative vision, an alternative hope of what can be. The spirits of the age meet the Spirit of the age to come.

In one song, Cockburn describes that Spirit of the age to come as a “Messenger Wind”:

Messenger wind swooping out of the sky
Lights each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope
With hope

When the sun is setting on a year of violence in which bloodshed has followed bloodshed, what we most desperately need is hope. When you feel like you are living “in the falling dark,” what you desperately need is something that will lighten “each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope / with hope.”

And so, in 2012, Bruce Cockburn will sing us songs of prophetic critique and prophetic hope. We should raise our glasses and sing with him,

And don’t tell me there is no mystery
Mystery
Mystery
And don’t tell me there is no mystery
It overflows my cup

This feast of beauty can intoxicate
Intoxicate
Intoxicate
This feast of beauty can intoxicate
Just like the finest wine

So all you stumblers who believe love rules
Believe love rules
Believe love rules
Come all you stumblers who believe love rules
Stand up and let it shine
Stand up and let it shine (“Mystery”)

Brian J. Walsh’s most recent book is ‘Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination’ (Brazos Press). He is a regular contributor to empireremixed.com.

Keep giving us Christians a hard time. We desperately need it.

Here’s the link.

Imagine a day when everyone was a part of a caring community of people who loved each other.

Consider a day when everyone shared their stuff; in fact, no one believed anything was ‘their stuff’ but that it belonged to the whole community.

Imagine a time when no one felt the need to abuse the people in their community by taking advantage of people’s kindness.

Imagine a time when everyone had someone to love and knew that someone loved them.

Just imagine!

Come Lord Jesus. Come quickly!

The Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee are impressive institutions in the socio-economic life of Israel, but they aren’t regular topics of conversation during Advent. And this is, ostensibly, with good reason. It would seem that even the most creative theologians might be hard pressed to establish a connection between Israel’s socio-economic life and our expectant awaiting of the birth of Jesus.

But a faithful reading of the Gospel of Luke – the gospel we turn to for an in depth account of our Saviour’s unorthodox birth – suggests otherwise. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke we find that there is a very precise connection between the laws of Sabbath and jubilee and the child for whom there was no room at the inn. Luke tells us that Jesus is the agent of a new kind of jubilee.

For us to see this connection properly, however, we’ll need to look briefly at the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee.

The Sabbatical Year is characterized by remission and release. In short, its laws state that any social or economic imbalances that have accrued between Israelites over the course of six years are to be leveled in the seventh. (Deuteronomy 15) All claims held against one’s neighbour are to be dropped and all Israelites who have been forced to sell themselves into slavery are to be set free (and sent away with a “liberal” provision of wheat and wine!). So the Sabbatical Year is about restoring socio-economic equality within Israel.

And the Year of Jubilee is characterized by return. Every fifty years, on the Day of Atonement, the Israelites are to sound the trumpet loudly throughout the entire nation in a proclamation of jubilee. They are to return to their ancestral land – land which has been sold or leveraged in the process of economic exchange – and receive it back. (Leviticus 25) The Year of Jubilee ensures that every Israelite has access to land, and in an agricultural society this is of primary importance. Jubilee is regulated asset recovery. In the same way as the Sabbatical Year, it promotes equality within Israel.

The Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee are limits placed by God on the economic life of Israel that point toward the realization of shalom. And when we consider their relation on a more fundamental level, it becomes evident that they are rooted in three common ideals: forgiveness, liberation and healing.

The forgiveness of debts and the liberation of the enslaved in the Sabbatical Year are acts which bring about healing. And the redistribution of assets in the Year of Jubilee is a kind of socio-economic healing that, combined with forgiveness, brings about liberation. To those who are indebted because they fell victim to circumstance and to those who have squandered their inheritance on reckless living, there is forgiveness, there is liberation and there is healing in the Year of Jubilee.

And here’s where the connection with Advent exists. When we read on in the Gospel of Luke, what we find is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus that is structured around themes of Sabbath and Jubilee. But this isn’t coincidence; this is an overt statement from the author that Jesus’ life and ministry are about forgiveness, liberation and healing.

The first indication is Luke’s opening account of Jesus’ ministry, where Jesus reads a jubilee passage from Isaiah in Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18–19) Jesus doesn’t just happen to read this passage, he reads it with intention. And this same intention is present in his exceedingly short meditation on the scripture that follows: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)

As Luke tells it, Jesus begins his ministry by announcing that he is the agent of jubilee. Who is this man? He is the one who has been anointed to proclaim good news to the poor and liberty to the captives. He is the one who brings forgiveness, liberation and healing.

But in case we missed the first jubilee reference, Luke includes a second one. When the disciples of John the Baptist are sent to Jesus asking if he is the one to come, he responds first by healing people of diseases and restoring sight to the blind (enacting jubilee), and second with a proclamation of jubilee: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.” (Luke 7:21–23)

Again, there is nothing cryptic about these words. Is he the one to come? Yes! He is the Anointed One, the agent of jubilee who brings forgiveness, liberation and healing!

Since Luke makes this point so clearly, we can think of his Gospel as a kind of jubilee proclamation. Of course, there is something slightly different about the jubilee that it proclaims. As opposed to Israel’s socio-economic jubilee, it bears witness to the jubilee of all jubilees. It announces that Jesus grants remission and release from sin, and he restores the distorted and the broken to new life. This jubilee is not oriented only toward shalom in Israel, it is the means by which shalom is restored between God and humanity. Jesus brings forgiveness, liberation and healing to all of us, and his forgiveness, liberation and healing go all the way down.

In Advent, then, what we expectantly await is the arrival of a new kind of jubilee. It is for all people, and it comes to us in the form of the infant Jesus. And if the entirety of Luke’s gospel is a proclamation of this new jubilee, then the birth narrative of Jesus can be thought of as the trumpeter drawing in her breath, pursing her lips and raising her instrument on the Day of Atonement.

In Advent we are filled with excitement because we know what the child in the manger is about to deliver. We know that a radical new jubilee has been proclaimed by the life and ministry of Jesus, and we know that against the hopelessness and the chaos that remain so tangible, the trumpet is about to sound.

Imagine a day when everyone had meaningful work for meaningful pay.

Consider a time when people didn’t have to take a job that was degrading, humiliating and went against their own personal values just so they could pay the bills and feed their children.

Imagine a world where there was no such thing as a power hungry, greedy employer who didn’t care about anything but her/his profit margin.

Just imagine!

Come Lord Jesus. Come quickly!

Imagine a world where when someone asks “are you ready for Christmas?” it didn’t mean “have you braved the frantic masses of bargain hunters in malls so that you can buy all the useless presents for the people you care for so you can prove you love them?”

Imagine a day when getting ready for Christmas meant preparing our hearts, our homes, our families for the coming of the Saviour of the world.

Just imagine!

Come Lord Jesus. Come quickly!