Advent|Rattling of Swords

Rattling of Swords

Can you hear it? Metal being drawn from scabbards? The puffing of chests? The pomp? Sort of like the schoolyard, except the outcome of the rattling of swords has much more dire implications once the schoolyard becomes global, interconnected politics.

The most recent and apparent rattling of swords seems to have entered the media’s narrative at the end of November, when the British government expelled Iranian diplomats following attacks on its embassy. Shortly thereafter, France removed its own diplomats from Iran. Following this rattling, President Obama asked for the US’ military drone back. And, recently, former Vice President Cheney has called for a quick airstrike against Iran.

Within our own context is Canada’s geopolitical choices around Kyoto. Our choices to withdraw from collective agreements that endeavour to seek balance with our footprint upon Creation certainly sounds like rattling. Another recent Canadian example, to consider, is our government’s refusal to allow some women freedom of choice and religious expression in citizenship ceremonies.

My point is not to contextualise, critique, defend or challenge these realities – rather it is to acknowledge that, as Christians walking through Advent, we have ALWAYS been surrounded by Empire. And one of the most significant tools that is utilised to enforce power is the making of war, regardless of whether that is expressed with arms, propaganda or terror.

Those who endeavour into discipleship of the Christ are confronted with the humble arriving of a child that was born into the midst of violence, quickly shepherded away from his birthplace during his early years because he was such a threat – according to our Sacred Stories – that an entire generation of baby boys were executed. And what was his threat to those in power that they utilised the tools of terror?

One of adages that I often quote, and I apologise if you have heard me say this too often, is that ‘you will always get, what you have always got, if you keeping doing what you’ve always done.’ What we – as a species – have always done is create systems of inequity, systems that create illusions of freedom, but which are always built on the backs of those with the least. And the tools of war, with too much irony, are often carried by the young men and women of Empire who do not benefit from the illusion of freedom: to be more direct, wars are fought by the have-nots on behalf of the haves.

The Red Pill or the Blue One?

And into this repeated pattern comes this child that will model that the tools of war do not work! More pointedly, they do not work in leading to actual freedom: a freedom that nurtures the realisation that life is sacred, that we are all interconnected and when one harms another human being, one is actually perpetuating hurt upon oneself! But that realisation – in Christian-language revelation – carries with it a burden. You can’t go back – there’s no Blue Pill … and with this awakening comes both gift and choice: do you help birth change, again in Christian-language, do you choose to begin to bring about the Kingdom to Come?

As I continue these Advent blogs, it occurs to me that it would be easy to say, “but Richard, you’re being too naïve,” or “the situation is too complex, your glossing over the threat that X is.” And, I realise that might be and likely is an initial reaction, and all I can say is that is part of the distraction, that’s part of the challenge of our letting go that we are a part of this Empire. Empire is not us and them. It’s not the American or Roman Empire vs. the oppressed people from X. The ENTIRE human construct is Empire. It’s what we have fashioned to make sense of our day-to-day live: it is the illusion that we are in control and it does not easily let go of us, nor we of it. And it is this time of year for Christians that we must face our own choices and whether we are prepared to go to the manger to welcome this boy and lay down our own gifts or whether we will pass by this radical birth and continue to be comfortable in the illusion, even though there is always that constant whisper that something is wrong, that another world is possible, that there is real freedom …