These days I’m reading a lot of the Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann.

His writing is prose infused with poetic (and prophetic) outbursts that, depending on, cause the reader to sit up, gasp, cackle, or pause in stunned silence at the implications of his speech.

I like him.

So I share a few words from him that seem particularly Adventy:

My thesis is that preaching is a sub-version.  You will recognize the play that I intend. Preaching is never dominant version, never has been.  It is always a sub-version, always a version, a rendering of reality that lives under the dominant version…an alternative version of reality that says another way of life in the world is not only possible but is peculiarly mandated and peculiarly valid.  It is a sub-version because we must fly low, stay under the radar, and hope not to be detected too soon, a sub-version, because it does indeed intend to sub-vert the dominant version and to empower a community of sub-versives who are determined to practice their lives according to a different way of imagining.  (Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World, p. 4)

Why is this excerpt Adventy?

Because Jesus, despite all attempts to either spiritualize or domesticate him, was subversive.

Mary knew it before the kid was even born.  The Magnificat, the hymn she sung after she visited Elizabeth, lilts with subversiveness:

(Luke) ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

Can’t get much more subversive than that.

“…for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant…”

God did not look on Mary for her marvelousness (though I am sure she was all of that), but for her lowliness.  As liberation theologians tell us, God has a preferential interest in the lowly.

And again:

“…he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

Scattering, bringing down, lifting up, filling up, sending away.

Nothing is where we last left it.

The sub-version is arising…at least for those who now see reality subversively, who are emboldened to be subversives, to speak a different version than the one Brueggemann calls the dominant one.

It takes, as Brueggemann acknowledges, some imagination.

In fact, I would argue that subversives, rather than choosing to “to practice their lives according to a different way of imagining” are actually the only ones imagining.

Engaging in the status quo, in the dominant version, takes very little (if any) imagination at all.

It’s the default reality.

But being subversive, living according to a reality that seems everything but realistic, now that takes imagination, courage, chutzpah, community, and the vision of Mary who knew that the world can indeed be other than it is.

Maybe, just maybe, it is already other than it seems to be.

As an Advent meditation, then, it might be an interesting, chutzpah-esque, visionary, imaginative exercise to consider what the dominant, unimaginative reality is in your world.

And then it might be particularly Adventy, in the adventurous, anticipatory sense about which I have recently written, to become the subversive you know you have always wanted to be.

At least the one you are called to be.

For, as Bruce Cockburn knows in his fantastic tune, “Cry of a Tiny Babe:”

And there are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepards and street people, hookers and bums

And the message is clear if you have ears to hear
That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fears
It's a Christmas gift that you don't have to buy
There's a future shining in a baby's eye

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever,
Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe