Advent Hope for a Fearful World
December 12, 2024
A Conversation with Dr. K.-K. Yeo
When the world is wrapped in tatters, not tinsel, part of our duty as ministers is to remind people that this context also surrounded the first Christmas. With radio carols mandating a jolliness we do not always feel and a million messages directing us to consume our way to cheer, in any year we risk crowding out Advent. But when our lives are beset by near-daily crises, the need to return to our roots becomes even more acute. “These are hard times of radicalism and violence, hatred and division, nihilism and hopelessness. But the time of empires in the Bible, especially first century Greco-Roman society is likewise full of uncertainty, despair, and conflicts.” Dr. K.-K. Yeo tells me. “And still, Jesus and Paul were able to see Christian faith, hope, and love to be prophetic agents of divine transformation.” This, Garrett’s Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament explains, is the radical promise nestled within the story of God’s birth—not garlands as a seasonal accent for already-comfortable lives but love that promises to fundamentally reshape culture.
Particularly amid rampant polarization, there is temptation to seek peace by vilifying ever-more-intently those with whom we disagree. “Without holding the healthy tension of the Bible and cultures, we often slide into narcissistic love and demonize others, further inflaming a broken society, nation, church, and world,” Dr. Yeo observes. “We err on the side of partitioning, segregating, radicalizing, thus the problems of dualism, political correctness, ethnocentrism, and racism increase.” He notes that this tendency isn’t just confined to the political arena, it bleeds into how we interpret the Bible. “We begin asking, ‘Is one person better than the other?’” Dr. Yeo questions, “Is the Gospel of John’s Jesus superior than that of Mark? Or the Asian Jesus more correct than that of the African?” All of this plays neatly into the hands of the authoritarian governments rising throughout the world, who would rather see us separated, because a divided populace is easier to frighten and control.
And yet, the Advent hope angels proclaimed to shepherds huddled on the outskirts of 1st Century Judea still holds power to redirect hearts away from this cyclical violence. “The biblical-theological virtues of faith, hope, and love are divine agents to transform our world,” Dr. Yeo says. “Faith overcomes radicalism and violence. Love resolves hatred and division. ‘Already-not-yet’ hope repairs hopelessness and overconfidence, especially the arrogance of the nations.” Like Christmas itself, these words can become so worn that we cease to notice their inherent power. But if we take them seriously, they become an entry point to revitalize how we hear Advent’s promise. “The advent/coming hope offers polyphonic voices, advocates both-and, or better still, ‘one-and-more’ kinds of metaphorical hermeneutics,” Dr. Yeo’s eyes light up. “And this is wed to a gospel whose whole subtext is politically charged. In that world, though only Caesar can proclaim himself to be the savior of the world, but in the Gospel, Luke uses that title for Jesus.”
Crucially, the Advent story both adds desperately needed nuance to how we see the world and reframes who is centered in God’s liberating birth. Dr. Yeo recently co-edited Justice and Rights: Nicholas Wolterstoff in Dialogue with the University (Langham Publishing, forthcoming) which contends “that Wolsterstoff convincingly argues justice is especially due to the quartet of the vulnerable: the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the resident alien,” Dr. Yeo notes. “These categories are cultural, so the volume expands to look at non-divinity disciplines and scholars in humanities, social sciences, law and public policy, medicine and physical sciences to explore with Wolfterstorff the salience of justice and rights for the substance of their scholarship and academic practices.” When we recenter our hearts around the rights denied to marginalized people, it forms the cornerstone for a society that can correct these historic and ongoing injustices. In his essay “The Asian Faces of Jesus,” Dr. Yeo similarly recasts how the story of Jesus in Asia exemplifies the way God sent his Son to help us confess our own personal sins but, crucially, also to redeem the sins of the world. “The salvation of Jesus is not simply about atoning sacrifice, but also offering love—a powerful movement of a wholistic gospel from ‘saved from’ to ‘saved for/to.’”
In this season, we must return to the specific details in our Advent stories, because they offer guidance for how we can nurture faith that leads beyond the present violence and despair. “Herod, like all authoritarian rulers, is fearful and thus always building palace-fortresses. In contrast, Mary is from a small Nazareth village. It is through her receptive and meditative heart that she becomes a self-offering agent of God,” Dr. Yeo remarks. “Empires feed themselves with suspicion, propaganda, deception, and conquest. The Advent story of love, meekness, and purity of trust subvert those forces.” From the shepherds and sheep who join angels in singing praises for a helpless baby to sages from the East paying homage, Advent inverts how we understand power. It also asks us to reinterpret parts of the story we think we know, like metaphors about darkness and light. “I keep reminding myself and my students that darkness in the biblical sense is never categorized as evil,” Dr. Yeo says. “It is an environment where, if you are not careful you can easily make wrong decisions that lead to injustice. But with wisdom, it also becomes an environment that nurtures hope, faith, and love—courting the light that’s coming, transformation that is already and not yet fully here.”
As ministers throughout the country prepare for Christmas Eve services, Dr. Yeo hopes they share these particularities from our holy texts, inviting congregants to root themselves in biblical faith, hope, and love. The angel proclaims our story: “Do not be afraid!” “When Christmas comes at the end of a year filled with so much personal and geopolitical brokenness, don’t let fear shape your message,” he says. “Offer a robust sense of the gospel, one that interprets Jesus’ birth through the entirety of his life through his ascension—then the giving of the Spirit. Advent looped together with Christ’s coming again.”