The Advent Conspiracy: Meant to Change the World

STORIES

Nov 26

“Power to the people!” I commented under my breath. Some years back, I and a friend were walking the mile or so from Millennium Park in Chicago to the commuter station, hoping to be in time to catch our west-suburban bound train. We ran into demonstrators who were passing out flyers and shouting over a loudspeaker.

“Did you say, ‘Power to the People?’” my younger friend asked. I explained to him I was writing a novel set in Chicago in 1968 and that “Power to the People” was a frequent cry during the Vietnam War protests of that earlier decade. As we continued to hurry toward Ogilvie Station, he asked another question. “Is there anything you believe in enough that you would go to the streets for it?” It is actually hard to answer that question when you’re navigating the crossing signals on busy rush hour traffic streets.

I do have some problems with protest movements, they often turn as loud and noisy and hateful in their protest and as militant as the evils they are protesting. It’s hard to hold a sincerely distressed crowd of people to the high ideal of peaceful protest. I’m wary of becoming a mirror image of the hostility and anger and name-calling.

However, I am not above joining subversive movements—particularly when their end goal is to make the world the way God intended it to be. According to Burton lore (my father’s lineage), there are twenty-some ordained ministers in the past three generations of the family tree. Believe me when I say I am convinced that this messes with one’s DNA. My view of the world and my role in it, my predilection for hunting for and for working toward creating a society flourishing with goodness is a given. I even followed this genetic predisposition and married someone who was ordained into the ministry—Dr. David R. Mains. For this reason, I am not above being party to subversive movements—particularly when their end goal is to make the world the way God intended it to be.

For instance, my co-workers and I discovered a website that proclaimed itself to be “The Advent Conspiracy.” The explanation was it is “an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption.” Their motto was “Worship More, Spend Less, Give More, Love All.” Now that’s a conspiracy I can support.

My friend’s question, “What would you go to the streets for?” might be answered by saying that, although I haven’t marched with protestors, I have given myself to the subversive act of practicing Christian hospitality. All the great three monotheisms—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—place a high value and a rigorous emphasis on this practice.

At the end of November, after Thanksgiving, our table is set for the Christmas holidays. This saves me all kinds of work. After an evening with one group, we simply wash the dishes, clean the kitchen, then reset the table. No putting dishes and silverware away, then taking them out for the next group of guests. We put the place settings back on the table. In my mind, it is an act of welcome that speaks right away from the dining room, “We’re so glad to have you in our home.”

One night, however, after one of the many large gatherings was finished, the kitchen cleaned, David and I rolled, exhausted, into bed. “Karen,” my lovely husband said from the left side of our double bed, “Maybe you shouldn’t invite any more people to our house for a while.” Admittedly, my invitational enthusiasm can overwhelm my practical pragmatism.

“Hospitality shows the face of God to the world.”

I have learned a home must have locks on its doors as well as hinges, but I feel as though I’m being pushed by some inward nudge to subvert the loneliness and alienation and separation I see all around me by bringing the very presence of the most hospitable of men who had not home of his own but whose personal invitation was always extended to all—even to the outcasts of society, to the lonely, to the neglected, to the abused and to the underprivileged. That young man, of course, was Jesus.

You see, I passionately believe hospitality shows the face of God to the world. He is a God of welcome and inclusion and invitation and continual discourse and a never-ending longing for connection. Without a diligent practice of hospitality, in our homes and in our churches and in the workplace, this world cannot ascertain what He is really like.

A while back David and I gathered friends who are hospitable to function in a listening group where we listened to the stories and the lessons learned from those who practice this subversive act. We heard stories of once-a-month neighborhood open houses. We heard the story of the family who took in a homeless woman and her week-old baby. We heard of a coffee house set up in a private residence for the young suburban adults who don’t have anywhere to gather.

“Ho-ho!” Some of you may be thinking. “That’s all well and good, but hospitality as a subversive act?”

“Christmas is where the Advent Conspiracy begins.”

The weeks leading up to December 25 are intended to be a time of personal soul-searching, a time of truth-telling to our own selves.

Christ himself, a displaced person, taught this, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite, the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (That is from the book of Luke. Of course, given the state of my DNA, I’m going to quote from Scripture.)

We like to think if Christ came into our personal world, knocked at our door, sat beside us at the gate while we were waiting for an airplane, and stopped (a stranger, after all, in many guises) to talk to us in a busy city street, that we would welcome Him, begin to chat, receive Him into our homes, invite Him to stay in our guest room. We don’t invite our neighbors, accept the foreign-born with open arms, including that difficult and often ornery family member, or welcome our own church family into our homes.

Do we really think we would welcome the Stranger, Christ?

“...we are still saying after all these years, ‘No Room In My Inn!’”

The simple truth is this: If we do not welcome others, we do not welcome Him. Let’s face it: we are still saying after all these years, “NO ROOM IN MY INN!”

Christmas is where the Advent Conspiracy begins. The weeks leading up to December 25 are intended to be a time of personal soul-searching, a time of truth-telling to our own selves. Perhaps this year it might be good for all of us to consider if we really believe in a conspiracy so radical it can transform society.

That’s a worldwide conspiracy worthy of going to the streets, of marching around with signs that proclaim, JOIN OUR ADVENT CONSPIRACY!