Advent 1, 2011

Readings for the 1st Sunday of Advent:
    Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

In the advent seasons, when the past has fled, unasked, away
    and there is nothing left to do but wait,
God, shelter us.
Be our surrounding darkness;
    be the fertile soil out of which hope springs in due time.
In uncertain times, help us to greet the dawn and labor on, love on,
    in faith awaiting your purpose hid in you
        waiting to be born in due time. Amen.

(Ruth Duck, USA, 20th Cent. - United Methodist Book of Worship)

Lighting the 1st Advent Candle:

We light this candle as a symbol of Christ our Hope.
May the light sent from God shine in the darkness
    to show us the way of salvation.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.

~ United Methodist Book of Worship

Amazingly, we find ourselves back in Advent awaiting - the season of waiting. Waiting for Christ's birth; waiting for the Kingdom to be fully fulfilled, even as we set about working towards it's fulfillment; and waiting for Christ's second coming. All of this is tied up in this season of Advent.

During this season, I will be blogging twice a week: Mondays and Fridays. Fridays will continue the Advent theme.

To start with, I thought it might be helpful to give a very rapid overview of the where/what of the cultural arena into which Jesus was born. Note this is Rapid and an Overview. I'm using John Dominic Crossan's work The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco, 1998). I believe it is important to remind all of us that scholarly works (like Crossan's) are part of a larger discussion seeking truth, and that there are other good works out there. I just happen to have Crossan's work with me. I fully encourage you to learn more.

But first some very quick history ...

Here is the rapid overview. Alexander the Great and his Greek's conquered much of the known world, including Palestine. The Israelites revolted after a pig (an unclean animal) was sacrificed in the Temple, starting the Maccabees revolt. As part of the revolt, the Maccabees turned to a new upstart nation, Rome, to help them fight the Greeks. In turn, over the course of years, Roman increased more and more control over Israel, as Rome became the national world power.

Crossan's work argues through cross-cultural anthropology that one of the factors of imperialism is the commercialization of the rural communities. This rural commercialization encroaches upon the tradition way of life for peasants. In an agricultural society there are two "classes" or "strata" of people: and upper and a lower. The upper strata: Ruler, Governing Class, Retainer Class, Merchant Class and Priestly Class. The lower strata: Peasant Class; Artisan Class; Unclean and Degraded Class; and Expendable Class. The Ruler and the Governing Class (1-2% of the population) received 50-65% of the agricultural productivity. Retainer Class (5% of the population) made the entire process work through their military and scribal might. The Merchant Class reinvested their wealth back into the land, becoming part of the Governing Class, so as such, there was no middle class. The Peasant Class (the vast majority of the population) was purposefully kept close to a subsistence level so that any surplus could move up the chain. The Artisan Class was constantly recruited from the Peasant Class, as these would be former peasants who lost their land, or didn't inherit it in the first place (2nd sons, etc.), and their median income would be about 1/2 of the median income of the peasants. The Unclean and Degraded Class would be those who like porters, miners, and prostitutes could only sell their physical labor and/or bodies. In fact, they are often hard to distinguish between the Expendable Class. The Expendable Class varies between 5-10% in normal times, to 15% or even close to 0% on some occasions. This class paid the systemic price of holding the peasant class at a subsistence level. The Expendable Class was due to there being more people produced than the governing classes deemed fit to employ (Crossan. 154-6).

I thought the following introduction to Part V of his work, gave a nice and quick overview of how this was starting to play out in the Lower Galilee.

     The general conclusion from Part IV was that peasant dislocations created by rural commercialization increase the possibility or inevitability of resistance, rebellion, and even revolution. ...
     Part V has two chapters. Chapter 12 probes what went so terribly wrong between imperial Roman policy and traditional Jewish religion in the first two hundred years of their interaction. The constitutional traditions of Judaism involved a God of justice and righteousness under a law of justice and righteousness in a land of justice and righteousness. That God could not be other, and that people should not be other. God's Law was not a matter simply of divine will or divine command but of divine nature and divine character. In sacred law, in prophetic critique, and in scribal wisdom, this God stood against oppression and exploitation, against indebtedness, enslavement, and dispossession, against everything that increased inequality and destroyed equality. Land, as the basis of life, was not just a commodity for normal entrepreneurial manipulation: the land belonged to God; God's people were all tenants on divine property. Then along came Roman imperialism, which sought land for commercial exploitation as well as territorial expansion. Jewish tradition clashed predictably with that Roman policy. And it clashed not only because peasants usually resist rural commercialization but also (and especially) because Jewish peasants had a long and sacred tradition of such resistance.
     Chapter 13 places the third and final layer on my interdisciplinary model for context. Granted those anthropological and historical layers, there is still a further question. Was Galilee simply a Roman backwater of no value for urbanization or commercialization? Archeology indicates precisely what was happening in Lower Galilee in the first twenty years of the first common-era century [right when Jesus was born and into which Jesus ministry responds, too]. Herod Antipas was moving to urbanize Lower Galilee as his father, Herod the Great, had done earlier in Judaea and Sumaria. The rebuilding of Sepphoris and the creation of Tiberias represented centers of rural commercialization, and with their advent, anthropology, history, and archeology came together at the precise point where resistance could be expected. The time and place were now ready for the baptism-in-the-Jordan movement of John and the kingdom-of-God movement of Jesus.

John Dominic Crossan. The Birth of Christianity. 175-6.