In the dark days after the destruction of Judah Isaiah tells his listeners—do not be afraid. Look! he says. Your God is coming! Your God is coming to save you. In these dark days, when one report after another gives us reason to worry about the future of our planet, our nation, our struggling communities—wouldn’t we love to believe God will come and save us? Isaiah’s words lie at the heart of Advent, this season dedicated to WAITING and HOPE.
The unfathomable abyss of God’s mysterious ways, God’s pregnant darkness, fosters terror. We teeter at the edge of a vast unknown, often grabbing at whatever knobs and handles are available trying to gain control. But the controls are not, and never were, in our hands. Instead we are asked to wait—faithfully, patiently, expectantly—trusting God is with us and will, somehow, save us.
There are those who believe that Jesus will return and right the wrongs of humankind. The words of James have been used to validate that belief and argue for the second coming as an antidote to the world’s woes. But perhaps the most important words for us in James’ letter are found in his last sentence: model your lives on the example of the prophets who suffered tremendous hardships patiently while carrying God’s message to the people.
John the Baptist was fearless as he called people into the bleakness of the desert challenging them to change their hearts and mend their ways. He knew what was required—that the attitudes and behaviors of ordinary people needed to align with God’s loving, inclusive nature for the world to set itself right. It was a crazy and profound idea that personal alignment with values God embedded in individual hearts could change the world! And it threatened Herod’s power. So Herod had John beheaded, eliminating his adversary as well as the image and mouthpiece of radical structural change.
John was just one in a long line of prophets willing to sacrifice reputation and comfort following God into the wasteland in order to forge a path leading people back to God and solid ground. Jesus came along to demonstrate exactly what that solid ground looks like in practical terms: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, illness and death are overcome, and the poor are given TRULY GOOD news. His words and actions reveal the lifeblood of compassion. No one is a castaway in his eyes. He opens eyes and ears and loosens tongues so those without a voice can speak again. He helps people paralyzed in body, mind or spirit stand, walk, resume their place as full members of society. He raises dead hopes and dreams to new life by valuing the needs and longings of society’s outcasts. Through compassion and mercy he teaches them their worth.
In doing these things he tries to open the eyes and ears of those in authority, the people who control the workings of systems and structures, so they, too, can experience healing. He wants to remove blinders from their eyes and open their hearts so they, too, can be whole, so they can come to a place of peace on God’s solid ground. But they can’t let go, refuse to hear the GOOD NEWS he has to offer. This news that heals and uplifts the poor threatens the daylights out of them. They retaliate with all the brutality fear engenders. We know the result. True prophets are never revered in halls of power.
In Advent we encounter again the radical, locust-eating wild-man-prophet John who instructs us to prepare the way for God’s GOOD NEWS to enter the world we live in. He is an icon of transformation—what it takes to upend systems so that God can be recognized as the power coming to save us. That ‘power’ is exemplified in the story of Jesus, born in a stable to a young woman, far from home, who will soon be a refugee from Herod’s province. Christmas is a testament to God’s saving power, power that is at home in vulnerability, poverty, simplicity and humility. These are the qualities God cultivates in us in order to SAVE us. They ARE US when we are able to leave behind the trappings of our ego’s ambitions to return, humbly, to John’s waters of deep, interior change. Emerging from those waters we are clear-sighted, with hearts more open to the vulnerable, excluded and mistreated poor among us. We can feel God moving through us, delivered again into a world that needs God’s saving presence in real, direct, and tangible ways.
No labor is without pain and our delivery of the Christ-child through the vehicle of our own bodies and lives is always painful. Divesting ourselves of attitudes, beliefs and tendencies that inhibit God’s palpable presence in our lives is a labor of love. And this labor is a time-intensive, life-long, surrender to God’s plan to enter and save the world through us.
We who sit at Mary’s knee have said ‘yes’ to carrying and delivering Christ to the world. Perhaps we have been waiting and waiting for something to change, but now we realize the change must come through us. It’s how God works, how God shows up, how God chooses to save the world. We know our limitations, the places where we balk, the attitudes we’ve acquired, the despair we sometimes feel, the just plain tiredness of fighting the uphill battles over and over. But Advent is about patience with others and ourselves as we follow the Baptist into the desert. It’s about hope—that God will strengthen us and give us courage. It is about anticipation of the birth we will soon experience—new life, Divine Compassion, streaming through us into a needy world. We are prophets and God-bearers strengthening our resolve to live as beacons of hope in the desert, letting the world know God-is-with-us-all by our actions, our attitudes and our lives.
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