"As soon as you address the other, as soon as you are open to the future, of waiting for someone to come: that is the opening of experience. Someone is to come, is now to come. Justice and peace will have to do with this coming of the other , with the promise."
--Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell, 24 (1997)
Advent, expectation, waiting...and Derrida. Of course, a natural fit. This is found in an explanation of Derrida's concept of the messianic which comes out of his understanding of other and otherness. What are we waiting for at Advent if not something other than our own selves. As I wrote in Sojourners in December 2005, Advent is a season of possibility, possibility that something might change, that it might not be the same as it has always been. This is the root of otherness, possibility outside of ourselves.
If we want to talk about salvation, liberation, mission, coming kingdom or anything else in Christian vernacular associated with the "coming of Jesus" past or future, we definitely have to talk about otherness. None of this is to be found inside of ourselves, individually or collectively or institutionally. What a lesson for the church to undertake every 12 months, for congregations as representations of one of the largest institutions in the world to recognize that are value is found outside of our own institutional existence.
Does our individual, collective, or institutional faith (or waiting or expectation) find its object within the self or the other? Do we still wait for ourselves to do it right the next time even though we know we won't. Otherness is the root (for Derrida) of justice and peace. We must look to the other as other, not as extension of self. Wait this Advent for other to enter in, for God to come in a way that is not familiar and internal but that is other, for in the other--not the self-- is real hope. That is what we wait for in Advent.
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