If Advent Is Real…

By Yolanda Pierce, Ph.D.,

It is during the Advent season when we pause in the Christian calendar to celebrate the birth of the soon-coming Savior. I love this moment in the liturgical cycle, because our hearts and thoughts are with Mary, the unwed, teenage girl chosen to give birth to the Christ child. I cannot understand Advent apart from Mary’s story: did she experience joyous expectation at the news of her pregnancy?  Did she fear the social ostracism connected to her unwed and pregnant state?  Did she lie awake at night and wonder about the path her child would walk? How did Mary deal with the daily dance between an all-consuming love for her child and an all-consuming fear of the world into which her child would be born?

This Advent, I am thinking about the mother of Tamir Rice, Samaria Rice. My thoughts keep recalling her 12 year old son, killed by a police officer less than two seconds after encounter; her frantic 14 year old daughter, handcuffed and placed in the back of the police car as she wails over her brother’s body; and Samaria Rice, as she herself is threatened with arrest when she arrives at the scene of her child’s killing. And I wonder, what would it mean for Christians to take the Advent story seriously?

If Advent is real to us, then the unwed teenage mother or the homeless veteran or the crack addict or the prostitute or the otherwise “undesirable person” in our society is often the one chosen as the bearer of God’s grace and mercy.

If Advent is real to us, then prophets like John the Baptist are being born, to declare that a new day approaches. But we ignore them because we don’t believe that prophets can arise from a Ferguson or a Cleveland. We don’t expect that our prophets will wear sagging pants and be armed with cell phone cameras.

If Advent is real to us, then we must acknowledge Mary as a mother who knew that the birth of her son came along with a death sentence. And so we grieve with all the mothers of black and brown children, who must give their children lessons about death before they even have a chance to live.

If Advent is real to us, then we celebrate the miracle of the season: the miracle that something good came out of Nazareth; that a Savior was born among the least and the lowly; that the greatest revolutionary the world has ever known came from the most humble of origins. And it should give us pause to think about who Tamir Rice or Aiyana Jones or Mike Brown or Renisha McBride may have been if they had simply been allowed to live.

If Advent is real to us, our hearts would break in grief at the image of Samaria Rice, or any parent anywhere, cradling the lifeless body of his or her child on a cold street; grieving a death at the hands of those who are supposed to protect and serve. Perhaps every time we send a Christmas card, with an image of Mary’s protective and loving embrace of the Christ child, we will be reminded that Tamir Rice was also someone’s beloved child.