Isaiah 64:1-9 – God’s mighty acts, yet the people are silent because God has withdrawn – and sin has tainted the relationship. “There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.”
1 Corinthians 1: up to v.9 “… you have been enriched in every way in him …. you are not lacking in any spiritual gift …”
As Advent advances, let us look back at Friday … as it has become known now as Black Friday in the commercialised takeover of the season … the sight and sound of mobs shoving, pushing and fighting, not for food in time of starvation or for safety from flood or fire or fear – but for TVs, vacuum cleaners and coffee machines – for stuff.
The 2004 report Mission-shaped Church for General Synod identified consumerism as one of, if not the dominant idolatries of our society. It spoke thus: “Pleasure lies at the heart of consumerism … it finds in consumerism a unique champion who promises to liberate it both from its bondage to sin, duty and morality as well as its ties to faith, spirituality and redemption. Consumerism proclaims pleasure not merely as the right of every individual but also as every individual’s obligation to him or herself …” Or, as the advertising slogan would say – because you’re worth it.
We should reclaim the truth of pleasure – it is our prophetic duty as Christians to speak truth to power – and remind people of the truth of consumption. To do so we will subvert the very language of consumerism to proclaim the wonder and the pleasure of God and set Good Friday against Black Friday.
Consumerism warps. As with any idol, it warps truth. Pleasure is not free of faith or spirituality – as with any other facet of creation – and we deceive ourselves and others if we allow it to be so separated. Pleasure gets tied up with sin and the need for redemption when we misuse it and morality and duty then get involved along the way. But God the creator of pleasures offers us in His kingdom the ultimate pleasure of being, of being in full and wholesome relationship with Him. Irenaeus wrote in the second century that “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” He has given us creation and the gift of grace: cut-price plasma screens seem rather paltry by comparison.
It would be easy and trite to say that Jesus died on Good Friday ‘because we are worth it’. He didn’t and we can’t. Jesus died on Good Friday because God loves us. Not because we are worth loving – we are as often as we aren’t – but that He loves us because of who and not what we are. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we get not what we deserve but what the loving grace of God desires to give us. God’s slogan is not ‘because you’re worth it’ but ‘because you’re you’.
God offers us fulfilment in Him through His unbounded generosity that far outweighs any temporary offer from Tesco. As we embark upon the Advent season and anticipate the greatest gift of all that God has given us – his very Son as a baby, let us acknowledge also the shadow thrown forward across the joy and wonder of that gift by the cross and the foreknowledge of what is to come on Good Friday. In this Advent let us consider the impact of what ‘because you’re you’ means to us and to those about us to whom we in turn proclaim that same message of God’s love in grace. Keep awake.
Tim Dawe Treasurer.
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