A high school teacher, frustrated by his students’ lack of enthusiasm for learning, walked into class one day and wrote across the chalkboard in deliberate strokes: A-P-A-T-H-Y.  “Apathy,” he said, underlining for emphasis.  “Does anyone know what this word means?”  There was a long pause, and the students stared ahead with blank expressions, bored with the question.  Finally, a girl in the middle of the room broke the silence, uttering under her breath, “Who cares?”

It’s hard to know, do we laugh at the irony or cry at the indifference?  I’m not sure if this exchange actually happened or if it’s just another fictitious anecdote, floating around in the ever-expanding sea of mass emails.  But it certainly could have happened in Anytown High School, USA.  The story stuck with me because it rings true not only of our youth, I’m afraid, but of our culture as a whole.  Apathy.  Who cares?  We still get excited about this and that new thing, of course, but we’re more and more at a loss for any substantive and sustained energy or motivation for meaningful living.  

The paradoxes of our day and time are apparent enough, but we don’t seem to know what to do about them.  As comedian George Carlin says: “We have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.  We spend more, but have less.  We buy more, but enjoy less.  We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.  We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.”

Today’s middle- and upper-class Americans—that’s us—are among the most fortunate people in the history of the world.  We are vir-tually surrounded by wealth and opportunity.  We have supermarkets full of food, institutions for higher education in almost every field of interest, entertainment overflowing in television, books, games, movies.       

In our abundance, even necessities like clothing have been transformed into the sport of shopping for the latest fashion trends.  We lack so little that even what we need be-comes a choice, a freedom—of sorts. 

The modern project, with its philo-sophy of human progress, believed that such a climate as ours would breed motivation, excitement, per-petual energy for life.  Why, then, with this plethora of luxuries spread before us, are we so apathetic?  Why, in a culture whose primary value, arguably, is self-fulfillment, do we feel so empty?

Let me suggest a theory: that our culture is so directed to the “now” that we have lost, on the one hand, our connection to history, and on the other, any sense of authentic hope for the future.  Too often the Church falls into this cycle as well.  As biblical scholar Walter Bruegge-mann puts it, “there is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now.”  A depreciation of memory.  A ridicule of hope.  Aha!  The apathy—the emptiness—begins to make sense.  If now is all that matters, we can only be energized by what is transitory and fleeting, and then only momentarily.  When we are disconnected from the stories of our past and future—the gospel, for instance—our lives lose their sense of purpose and meaning.  [Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Tenth Printing (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2001): 1.]           

We hear this emphasis on the “now” most readily in advertisements, which sell products with such catchy slogans as: “Obey Your Thirst,” (now) or “Just Do It” (now).  The same ads that prod us to buy now must also convince us that we are somehow inadequate as we are now.  The message goes something like this: “your hair is too long, your hair is too short, your skin is too light or too dark, your smells are noxious, you are too fat, too thin, too blemished,” if you don’t purchase such and such product, you will be impotent and have no friends.  You’ve seen the commercials, too, haven’t you?  [John F. Kavanaugh, Still Following Christ in a Consumer Culture: The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance, Revised Edition (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991): 36.] 

Now obviously we’re dealing with different genres here, but listen to the striking contrast in tone from such modern-day ads to Paul’s message in First Thessalonians.  “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.  And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (I Thess. 3:12-13).

Paul’s words in First Thessalonians are like a foreign language to a people who have no guiding story.  His message stands upon the found-ation of Judeo-Christian history cul-minating in the death and resurrect-tion of Jesus that gives them direc-tion in the present and hope for the future.  Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica with a yearning for their formation in Christian faith, and he’s encouraged by news of their continued growth in love even as he writes to encourage them.  His words are communal, thankful, joyful, prayerful, hopeful that the history of their faith will continue to shape them in the present and lead them toward a promising future. 

These words are for us, too, you know—a shared story and a common hope, connecting us to a community of faith that spans both time and space.  We have a story, that is to say.  We who are the Church are gifted with a foundation and a hope that transcends any and all momentary pleasures.  There is a fullness in our tradition than cannot be bought over any other counter. 

Now in case I’ve frightened the good Baptists in the pews with that “T” word (tradition), allow me to paraphrase Jaroslav Pelikan, professor of history at Yale, who says: traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, but tradition is the living faith of the dead. Tradition-alism is the dead faith of the living, but tradition, ah, tradition, is the living faith of the dead.  It is the very thread that ties us to those who have gone before, to the history that gives us roots from which to grow.   

Amid a culture that has lost its connection to past and future, and a Christian culture that has suffered from the same condition, the Church has no greater mandate than to re-member itself, to revisit and reclaim our history and our hope.  Walter Brueggemann reminds us that we are called to be a community that is “rooted in energizing memories and summoned by radical hopes,” a  community alternative to the now-is-all-that-matters culture. [Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, Tenth Printing (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2001): 3.]

We have within our Christian heri-tage a potent salve for the empty heart and apathetic spirit: a saving, guiding story that grounds human life in the gracious hand of God and offers a sense of both home and destination.  It may seem counter-intuitive—and according to recent trends, apparently, it is—but the way for the Church to get out of this numbing cycle of “now-ness” and offer real hope to our culture is to return to the ancient words and practices of the Christian faith that have offered “newness” of life for thousands of years.  

In other words, we need to hear the voices of hope calling to us from within our faith tradition so that we might become voices of hope to our own culture.  As it is, our roots are all-too-often shallow, so we wind up focusing on this or that apparent crisis, often finding other Christians on opposite ends of the social or political spectrum.  And all the while, we miss the larger issue facing the Church, of having our identity as an alternative com-munity eroded and finally super-seded by other claims for loyalty, until we become just another merchant among many.  My friends, this should not be so.  Only when we ourselves are immersed in the language and symbols of Christian-ity can we recognize and articulate the points of connection and discon-nect between the culture and our faith in such a way that we bring hope to our world rather than losing our hope in it.  Again, we need to return to the voices of hope within our tradition so that we might be-come voices of hope to our culture.   

What better time to think on tradi-tion than now, as we turn the page on the Thanksgiving holiday and look ahead to the Christmas feast?  And what better day to reflect upon hope than today, the first Sunday of Advent, the first season in the new Christian year? 

The word “Advent” simply means “coming” or “arrival,” and the season of Advent is a four-week period set aside to prepare for the celebration of Jesus’ arrival, or birth, and for his second coming.  It is a hopeful season, rooted in our shared story of past and future, that calls us to reflect upon how we should live in the present.  Already we have discovered our need to recover the hope within our tradition and to offer that hope to the world.  There is one more aspect of hope that we do well to consider as we prepare for the coming celebration of Christmas, and that is that God has hopes for us.  What might God be hoping for you, for your church, this Advent season?   

Let me encourage you not to think too small, for to slide into spiritual apathy is for us to turn our backs on our calling.  The words of author Marianne Williamson come to mind.  Often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela, her inspirational piece, “Our Deepest Fear,” will help us to dream about God’s hopes for us and for the Church.

“Our deepest fear,” she says, “is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, who am I to be bril-liant, gorgeous, talented, and fabu-lous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.  There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; [it is] in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”  [Marianne Williamson, “Our Deepest Fear,” from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles,” Harper-Collins, 1992.  See www.marianne.com.]