Advent in Africa

Advent in Africa

The Christmas season is coming. Unlike in the US, we don’t have all the normal markers of Christmas here. There are no lights strung up on the trees. Some areas near the city are lucky enough to get power at night. There are few Christmas carols being played in shopping malls…. We don’t even have shopping malls. In fact, the only thing that seems to signal a coming change is that we have moved from the dry season to the wet season.

Typically in the US, Christmas is a time to celebrate a coming together of families. We glaze the ham, make the scalped potatoes, roast the turkeys, and find our favorite Christmas sweater to wear. Without these normal cultural markers leading up to Christmas, it is difficult to get a sense for the coming holiday. Without the Christmas parties, or the TV specials like miracle on 34^th street or frosty the snowman or the slight promise of snow it is hard to feel a sense of that Christmas spirit.

Yet, with this past Sunday of Christ the king, the old liturgical year is coming to an end. Going to church from Sunday to Sunday, it is hard sometimes to make the connection. It is hard to realize that there is indeed a movement of the church. This past Sunday we were to be celebrating the triumph of our church, the eschatological hope on which our faith is founded.

Perhaps we celebrate Christmas a little too early in the US. Everyone knows that thanksgiving signals Christmas. Our anticipation is built up in part by our cultural tradition and also in part by consumer tendencies in our culture.

This separation from home has been sparking a lot of thoughts in my mind lately. This coming Sunday marks the begin of the new liturgical year. It is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent, as the Latin name implies, is a building of anticipation towards to coming of Christ, the incarnation, the penetration of God into his human creation in a new way. The real markings of the coming of Christmas here are in fact those of the church.

With Christmas, we are celebrating a special event, where Christ became present amongst us. Incarnation is in fact what I am studying this year. When God became manifest in one human family, in one culture, in one religion, god made possible the penetration into every culture, every human family. The fullest expression of the Christian faith is not European or middle eastern or any one culture, but rather an indwelling of Christ in any culture. Christ came to bring us a fullness of life. As we discover how we can live fully and authentically as humans within our own cultures and contexts we, and our cultures, become drawn up or lifted up to Christ. I hope that my celebration of Advent and Christmas this year, can be filled with anticipation for the way that the Christ is being born here in Tanzanian culture. I hope that I can apply the same hope and confidence in this birth as we do in the birth of Christ. It’s an amazing thing really, that this birth which occurred as a moment in history 2000 years ago, is celebrated, enacted and truly taking place again and again. Let us be mindful then, with this coming of advent, of the emerging of Christ in our life every day. Let us also protect and nuture this coming of Christ, this rebirth in every culture throughout the world.

Christ was born as a refugee. Christ was born “on the way”. In the US, let us be mindful in particular during this Christmas season of those political and economic refugees within our midst.

Let us also be aware that in order to nurture this faith across the world, we have to be aware of the economic shackles that the world system places on the developing world. This is a bondage that we participate in as a nation. Africa is a continent that is rich but rendered poor. As I asked what the biggest obstacles to having a fully authentic African faith were to one missionary, he mentioned poverty.

There is a true economic poverty, where people are in a situation where they can’t make the morally “right” choice. Indeed, we do not find the thief who steals bread culpable, for, as Thomas Aquinas stated, the bread was already his to begin with. When the prime concern for a person is surival, they do not have the luxury of adequate time for reflection and creativity (not to say that it can’t and won’t happen though). We have a debt of responsibility to question the international structures that place these countries in debt to us. Within Africa, there is a belief that any evil in life can find its source in the immoral action and behavior of others. This dangerously plays itself out in the notion of cursing. Behind this though, is the idea that there are no accidents in life. People understand that a person gets sick from a mosquito bite. They then, however, ask the question, why was I bit by the mosquito? Now this form of causality may sound silly to us, but when we do realize in fact, that the situation here in Africa, whether be it drought and deforestation caused by corporate farming, or the illness present here that could have long ago been eradicated with enough resources adequately focused on it, or famine when there are enough resources in the world to deal with this food situation, then it is not so irrational to ask the question, “why Africa?”