This Week

This week at praxis...Promises, Promises

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill 
the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 
In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to 
spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness 
in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will 
live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: 
"The LORD is our righteousness." 
----Jeremiah 33:14-16

The joyous thing that is to transpire in the coming time is 
nothing less than the fulfillment of Yahweh's promise to 
revive the house of David.  The image is, of course, 
that of a great, felled tree from which a new shoot is to 
emerge-an image that itself is a paradigm of life-out-of-death 
and thus is one that affirms the larger image of days-of-evil 
now become days-of-good.  But the shoot is no ordinary sucker, 
feebly attempting to preserve a last vestige of the once-mighty 
oak or cedar. "This is a righteous Branch," one who will fulfill 
the ancient model of Israelite kingship by executing justice 
and righteousness. The Branch will become a mighty Tree in its own right. 
----Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV - Year C

Advent is a time in which we are invited to turn our attention to 
the fact that we are recipients of a promise.  As a culture we seem 
to have little time for promises of the sort held out in Old Testament 
times, promises whose telling plunges us deep into the wideness and 
mercy of God.  Instead, we attend to promises of a much more limited 
and transient nature: Buy this cosmetic and you will find beauty. 
Wear that brand of pantyhose and you will win love. Drive this model 
of car and you will achieve power. Attain this degree or that position
and you will have fulfillment. Our media is filled with such promises. 
We even have a margarine that bears the name Promise. 
We purchase perfumes with labels like Joy, Knowing, and Dreams. 
To put it succinctly, as a culture we have co-opted our own ability 
to articulate and dream out of the most fundamental longings of our heart.

To open ourselves to the possibility that there is a more radical, 
all-embracing promise than the ones offered by commercial enterprises 
eager to take our money and play on our restless longings in order that
we might buy more is to begin to live the season of Advent. 
----Wendy Wright, The Vigil:  Keeping Watch in the Season of Christ's Coming

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future. 
---- Hannah Arendt, "Civil Disobedience," Crises of the Republic

Questions:

• What is the promise of God in the Jeremiah reading?
• What promises of God do you claim? How did you understand them as promises?
• Why do we talk about promises at the beginning of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas? What are the promises of Christmas?
• The people Jeremiah was speaking to had a very specific need; they were looking for a king. What are we looking for?
• How do God's promises help us order our future?