Love in Littleness
The movie is Superman 2. This is the one where Superman decides to renounce his superpowers in order to live a normal life as Clark Kent with his new love, Lois Lane.
For Superman to choose love he has to choose littleness.
The movie was released in the summer of 1981, which situates me at the precipice of my sixth birthday. I don’t remember the exact time frame in which I first watched the movie, but I know it was in the six to eight year old range. I remember being annoyed and incredibly confused at why Superman would give up his powers in order to have a sleep over with Lois Lane. And then he gets beat up in that little diner by a bully. What kind of crap super hero movie is this? Let’s let that question hang in the air for a bit.
The context of the first Advent has the Jewish people anticipating the One who will come and return them to glory, which means restoring their land and their superior standing within the land. After years of exile in Babylon, the people are allowed to return to the land of Israel, to return to their home in Jerusalem. But it’s just not the same, it’s not a healed and whole land.
In 63 BCE, Rome, led by general Pompey, conquers Israel. Then in 40 BCE, Herod the Great is installed to rule with the title, King of the Jews. But he is merely a puppet ruler for Rome. Herod reigned for over 30 years, during which Jerusalem climbed to its peak of greatness, growing in immense wealth. The Temple Mount esplanade was artificially enlarged with supporting walls (including the Western Wall) to house Herod’s greatest work, the grandly reconstructed Temple, which took more than a generation to complete. In one sense Israel looked powerful, but to the Jewish people who centered their trust on the Divine, this power was simply a facade.
So they continued to anticipate and await the arrival of a true King, one who would liberate the people from the ways of Rome. One that would finally and completely free them the confines of all empire, that they would live as the free people of the Divine.
Sometime between 6BCE and 4BCE a child is born… in simplicity and poverty. We are told that through the fragility of infancy the world is going to be put back together. The world will be rescued not through military might or a monopoly of money, but in the cry of an infant.
Love comes to us through the littleness of a baby.
It’s counterintuitive to everything our context has taught us. It’s confusing when the message our world has sold us is that the biggest, loudest, and wealthiest win.
This season, which is the anticipation and expectation of The Great Rescue, begins with the simplicity of infancy.
And to live within a context of power through empire, this narrative can be annoying and incredibly confusing. I think it is crucial that we don’t try and resolve the tension, but to wrestle with it and invite the tension to do the counterintuitive and countercultural work within us. I trust this is a good place for us to be as we begin the second week of Advent.
My hope is that you will wrestle with the tension, that within the struggle a fresh faith will be born.
