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The Sacraments of Hospitality ˜ 249
Advent, by Murphy Davis
D e c e m b e r 1 9 8 5
Advent is almost here. In the rare and delicious moments I have taken lately
to think ahead, I’ve thought of Advent and how this wonderful liturgical season
will never be the same for me after the celebration of Advent in 1983.
The season is a celebration of all the best and most joyous themes: peace,
joy, hope, love, light. If you can manage to overlook the tacky glare of the American
consumer Christmas, the season is one of joyful anticipation: hope for the
coming of God; the birth of a tiny babe who came and yet comes as the Liberator,
who calls us out of our slavery and into the glorious light of God’s freedom.
At the end of the first week of Advent in 1983, we were gifted with a visit
from Jürgen Moltmann, a well-known German theologian who had spent the
fall term teaching at Emory University. We had invited him for supper, and on
the cold, rainy Saturday in December, he sloshed into our house, bringing immediate
warmth with his wonderful, contagious laughter and endless questions
about our work and the plight of the poor in the United States. We ate supper
and spent the evening in animated conversation. We had a great time and invited
him to come back for worship the next night.
Sunday night he bustled in with a bottle of Liebfraumilch tucked under his
arm. We gathered for worship and excitedly waited to hear what he would say
to us—this world-renowned theologian, author of many scholarly books (some
of them very thick!).
Jürgen Moltmann told, very simply, the story of his coming to faith. When
World War II ended, he was a seventeen-year-old soldier in the German army
and was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in England (or maybe Scotland). As
the days and weeks went by, he and others learned what they had not known: of
the slaughter and death in Nazi Germany before and during the war. With this
knowledge, despair seemed the only real option. All of this happened while he
had been a soldier in the German army. The world became a very dark and
hopeless place. In the face of such staggering evil, how could there be reason for
hope
Someone came to the prisoner-of-war camp and distributed pocket-sized
Bibles (in English!). As he spoke to us years later, Moltmann pulled the same little
Bible from his pocket. It fell open with a slight touch to the book of the
prophet Isaiah. “I read this,” said Moltmann. “‘The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them
has the light shined...,’ and I shall never forget it. The world had become only
darkness for me. But slowly, gradually, I began to see a very tiny flicker of a light.
Advent is the time of remembering.