This Advent
season we are surrounded by reminders that we live in a fallen world.
It is a reality so at odds with the vision of Isaiah of our readings
last Sunday and today: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the
leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling
together…the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus
it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to realize how far from that
vision we are in Iraq, in the Sudan, or in Chicago for that matter.
Are we still the murder capitol of the United States?
The following
sad excerpt from an AP news story last September 11 illustrates how
bittersweet life in our era can be:
The
bone brought sad finality to everyone but Brendan Fitzpatrick. It
was proof that his father had died on September 11, 2001. But for
Brendan, who is five, the news that a piece of Thomas Fitzpatrick’s
humerus had been recovered was vexing, at best. “Can we get
all the pieces and put them together,” he recently asked his
mother at their home in Tuckahoe, New York, “so he could be
alive?”
I wonder
if little Brendan was aware of that prophecy in Ezekiel when the prophet
sees bones scattered in a valley, symbols of war and injustice and death
of every kind, but then being brought together by the spirit of God
into living beings, hopeful beings, whole beings. And so in his own
way, Brendan asks with Ezekiel, “Who can take all the pieces of
this broken world, and make us whole?” The Advent message is that
it’s Jesus.
Hark!
A thrilling voice is sounding.
Christ is nigh, it seems to say;
Cast away the works of darkness,
O ye children of the day.
That was
John the Baptist’s proclamation,
On
Jordan’s bank the Baptist’s cry
Announces that the Lord is nigh
Awake and harken for he brings
Glad tidings of the king of kings.
But today
we read that John the Baptist had his doubts. A year or two after John
had said at Jesus’ baptism, “Behold the Lamb of God,”
John was put in prison because of his criticism of King Herod’s
incestuous marriage. Ultimately it cost him his head, as we envision
Salome dancing with murderous intent before her stepfather. But that’s
another opera.
In any
event, while he was in prison he had his doubts that Jesus truly was
the Messiah. Perhaps he was discouraged by his own circumstances as
well as the injustice and cruelty the Jews suffered at the hands of
their Roman oppressors. Can’t we understand that? In the dark
days of our own waiting and preparing it’s not difficult to relate
to John’s doubts, his need for assurance, his hope that God’s
peaceable kingdom might find its place in human form, an incarnation
of God’s peace and God’s justice.
Perhaps
John the Baptist was looking for a more militant messiah than he found
in Jesus. A militant messiah was a common expectation among the Jews
in that first century. It is widely believed that Barabbas and the two
men who were crucified alongside Jesus were zealots to the cause of
driving out the Romans by the sword. To be sure Jesus came to liberate
humankind, but over and over he was heard to have said, “My kingdom
is not of this world.” The liberation he came to bring was that
of blessing and healing, and so he answers John’s disciples, “The
blind can see, the lame can walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf can
hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
This is the kingdom I have come to proclaim, holiness and wholeness
for all who walk in love.”
But here
we are all those years later, and are we any nearer to that peaceable
kingdom, that vision of liberation for all God’s children? Annie
Dillard writes in For the Time Being,
Many
times in Christian churches I have heard the pastor say to God, “All
your actions show your wisdom and love.” Each time, I reach
in vain for the courage to rise and shout, “That’s a lie!”—just
to put things on a solid footing. Scripture says, “He has cast
down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He
has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty
away.”
“When
was that?” Dillard asks. “I missed it… I have seen
the rich sit secure on their thrones and send the hungry away empty.
Although we may look back with nostalgia to the good old days, there
were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation.
There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: the
people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful,
and self-aware; the people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer;
who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death.
I would
add to Dillard’s analysis of the past that we are equally unable
to look to some future time with any certainty of exactly when Christ
will return and set things right. James in this morning’s epistle
says that we must be patient. Easy for him to say. That was 2,000 years
ago and we’re still waiting. I guess the question I have is whether
or not I have what it takes to endure that waiting. What is it I must
do to keep that hope alive, to keep my faith fresh and vibrant, to find
touches of the spirit?
Peter
Blois wrote in the Twelfth Century:
There
are three comings of our Lord: the first in the flesh; the second
in the soul; the third at the judgment…The first coming was
humble and hidden; the second is mysterious and full of love; the
third will be majestic and terrible….In the first a Lamb; in
his last a Lion; in the one in between the two, the tenderest of friends.
And so
you and I are in this “interim,” this “in between”
period of Christ’s coming. We remember his coming as a child born
in Bethlehem and we hope for his coming again “in power and great
glory.” But you and I are living in this in-between time.
Annie
Dillard describes it this way, “Where in any instant the Sacred
may wipe you with its finger.” This is to say that, “For
though we may not live a holy life, we live in a world alive with holy
moments.” [Kent Nerburn] What we need to do is to take the time
to bring these moments into the light, to relish them, to share them,
to thank God for them.
I had
such a moment last week when I went to the office and on the Receptionist’s
desk there was a small shrine of Mary illuminated by a Christmas tree
light and a card from one of our Christmas Baskets’ recipients
saying, “God bless you and your family.” And I thought that
for all of the effort—and it is a very considerable effort—that
we exercise for families who have identified themselves as needing help,
that it’s all about connecting. And I was thrilled to see a Polaroid
of the mother of that family who had received our Christmas baskets
and who had sent us this gift in return. It is as Peter Blois tells
us, “In the first coming a Lamb; in his last coming a Lion; in
the one in between the tenderest of friends.”
Karl
Rahner has written this prayer:
Every
year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we
pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those
lovely songs of hope and promise. Every year we roll up all our needs
and yearnings and faithful expectation into one word: “Come!”
And
yet, what a strange prayer this is! After all, you have already come
and pitched your tent among us. You have already shared our life with
its little joys, its long days of tedious routine, its bitter end.
Could we invite you to anything more than this with our “Come’?
Could you approach any nearer to us than you did when you became the
“Son of Man”?
In spite
of all this we still pray: “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Amen.
