I’m sure most of you have heard about the Rosetta Stone. It’s a large piece of black basalt that was found by Napoleon’s soldiers in North Africa back in 1799. It contained a long passage written in three different languages, including Greek (which was well-known) and Egyptian hieroglyphics (which had never been translated). That stone became the key to unlock a wealth of information, allowing scholars finally to read the messages left by the ancient Pharaohs in their picture-hieroglyphs from centuries before.
A similar story comes from the 1830s when British soldiers in Persia saw a famous inscription carved high on the face of a mountain cliff. It’s known as the Behistun Inscription, and it used cuneiform script to proclaim a message in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Again, decoding the Persian section unlocked the door to understanding the other two, never-before-translated languages. Suddenly the world of Sumerian traders and Babylonian bureaucrats could be studied at last.
In a real way, the season of Advent plays a similar role to that of the Rosetta Stone and the Behistun Inscription. The biggest questions that confront us during our lives are topics like “Who exactly is God? Does the universe care about us? Is history moving toward a hopeful future or stumbling aimlessly toward a grim finish line?” Grappling with these religious-philosophical quandaries requires a “key” to unlock the door and show us a path forward.
As was seen in the two examples I mentioned earlier, great learning often comes from surprising sources. The Rosetta Stone and the Behistun Inscription didn’t contain marvelous information in and of themselves. The former describes a tax policy of Ptolemy V and the latter is a tedious description of Darius’ war victory over a rival king. What was so brilliant about these carvings is that they used everyday language to open up new worlds of insight.
In the same way, Advent points us to two great mysteries—the promise that God is the Lord of today and all our tomorrows and that the eternal God has drawn near to us through God’s incarnation in a child born in a Bethlehem. That birth gives us the “key” to understand the meaning of life. It focuses us on one particular moment in history that is specifically designed to open our hearts and minds to good news that is true for all eternity. And through the birth of a helpless, marginalized, Palestinian Jew, we come to understand how the Creator of heaven and earth refuses to remain aloof from creation or be disinterested in the pain, suffering and challenges of life on earth. Rather, unto us a child is born, a Savior is given so that all people—especially the least, the poor, those on the margins as well as in palaces and mansions—may come to know themselves as siblings in Christ and inheritors of God’s kingdom of justice, love, and peace.
May this year’s Advent season be the key that opens to you a deeper, richer faith!
—Randy Bush