To a large degree in our
culture—at least for many adults—any sense of really waiting for Christmas has
long been done away with. It could be that I’m just projecting my own feelings of
frustration here, but as I listen to others and their long do-do lists, as I
observe the ever-increasing stream of traffic around shopping areas, as I fret
about deadlines for having things ordered so they’ll ship in time, it occurs to
me that there is no waiting anymore. Young children, I’d bet, still feel that
agonizing tension of expectation, but for so many of us, the primary feeling of
Advent is not “When, oh, when will the day get here?” but, rather, “Oh, sweet
Jesus, it’s barreling right at me!”
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| Memorial angels for the fallen in Newtown |
I read a blog entry this week
of one of the mothers who lost a child in the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown,
CT, which happened exactly two years ago, today. It was a moving post,
difficult to read. She wrote movingly about how much that day has permanently
affected her, how it effectively divided her life into time before Sandy Hook and
time after Sandy Hook. She lamented the loss of her old, optimistic personality,
wondering if it would ever return. Towards the end of the woman’s post, she
allowed that she was beginning to see glimmers of that joy, but was clearly eager
to have it increase and take over again. Now that, I thought to myself, is waiting. That is the agonizing tension of
expectation.
When we take modern-day Christmas
out of the equation, that’s the kind of waiting that Advent wants us to ponder.
If we were to take Christmas out of the equation—I know it’s hard to, but just
for a minute—I think we’d realize that that kind of waiting permeates all our
lives, to one degree or another. It’s the kind of waiting that pervades this
entire “benighted sphere,” as the old Swedish hymn calls the planet Earth. In all
the slums and cities and suburbs the world over people, each in his or her own
way, are racked by grief, by boredom, by the curse of sin, and they are wondering
if the joy will return. “Those who go out
weeping, carrying the seed,” go the words of today’s psalm, “will come again with joy, shouldering their
sheaves.” We want that to be true. We want to shoulder the sheaves of joy.
It is into that kind of
waiting—that agonizing tension when joy seems to be so delayed—that John the
Baptist appears. In first century Israel, everyone seemed to be waiting and
wondering whether God’s time would come. God’s rule would be marked by the
return of a prophet, or the anointing of a Messiah, a savior, and just about
everyone was on edge with that expectation.
John the Baptist suggested
that it was near at hand, and his appearance out in the wilderness, near the
small town of Bethany, rather than within the halls of power in the city, captured
the imagination and hope of the people. Out in the wilderness their ancestors’
dreams had been honed with a time of expectation. This voice made sense to
them, booming as it was. It evoked promise, sounding as if he had been sent
from God as a witness. It reminded them that God most often acts at the margins
(how could they have forgotten?), at the bottom of society first, and so they
flock to see him, to be cleaned with baptismal waters and be ready because that
which they were waiting for was here.
Even the powers-that-be from
way up at the Jerusalem Temple show up to check John out, sending their
representatives to interrogate him. Granted, at any given time back then there
were probably a number of people claiming to be prophets like John, but John
gets their attention. He might be stirring something up.
What grabs your attention
these days? What commotions and disturbances out there on the edges of your
life do you think deserve a closer look?
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| St. John the Baptist (Barbieri Giovanni Francesco) |
What the people find when
they finally reach John might surprise them. John, you see, wastes no time
pointing away from himself to someone else, someone greater. He, after all, is
to be a witness, not the subject himself. He is not the one everyone has been
waiting for. That one, in fact, stands among them now. John’s role is only to
help prepare people for his arrival, to carry the seed and toss it out into the
soil, to remind people that they have the chance to receive him. John
understands he’s not the light, but he will testify to the light. John knows he
is not the Promised One, but is one who speaks of the Promise. John is not the
answer to the eternal question if God loves us, but because John speaks of
Jesus, John is the witness to the answer.
I caught a part of a radio
broadcast the other day where people were calling in to the D.J. explaining
their favorite Christmas song. One person called in to say that “The Little
Drummer Boy” was most meaningful to her because she felt that song somehow placed
her in the manger scene, sharing her humble gifts with Jesus. Might I suggest
this morning the message is that we are not to be Little Drummer Boys, but little
John the Baptists? It is good to share our gifts with Jesus, but we are also to
testify to him, to point to him, to help the world notice, in humble ways, that
joy has arrived…that, at least as far as wondering whether God loves us and
remembers us, the wait is over.
Often without being aware of
it, we followers of Christ can often take on the tone that we are the answer to
the world’s problems. Without realizing the sanctimoniousness of our actions,
we burst onto the scene, into the neighborhood, into the village, into the
political debate with the attitude that now that we’ve arrived, things will
start looking up for everyone.
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| Hand-carved wooden crosses |
The reality is that Jesus is
God’s response to the sin in the world, to the agonizing tension of
expectation. Jesus is the one who proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus
is the one who brings liberty to the captives, who binds up the brokenhearted,
in Newtown and elsewhere. It is Jesus who is born to bring justice, who makes
his way from the murky waters of the River Jordan to the cross on Golgotha.
Those who testify to him,
therefore, must walk that fine line between being those who, like John, may
know about the light and even attract people because they stand so close to it,
but yet who always remember the importance of pointing away from ourselves to
that light. It is striking the balance between humbly trusting we have a claim
on the truth, and knowing, more importantly, that the truth has a claim on us.
And that truth stands in our
midst. We are not worthy to untie his
sandals, and yet he still comes to tell the world with his life and death that
its agonizing wait is over.
Last Sunday evening the
congregation celebrated its Consecration Sunday dinner in order to tally and announce
the financial commitments for the coming year and enjoy some congregational
fellowship. As is the custom, once the dinner was over, we put on our coats and
traipsed outside in the cold to the front yard of our church for the Grand
Illumination of our little town of Bethlehem Christmas display. Earlier in the
week, a team of volunteer men, led by a master electrician, had rigged the
large star and the angels high above us, and all the electrical switches and
cords were in order. We tested it. We were ready, yet for some unknown reason when
the time came to flip the switch, the lights flickered for a second, and then
immediately went out. That left us in the pitch-black dark, for whatever went
wrong had also knocked out the power to the large flood light that had been
focused on the manger.
We all stood there for a
second, wondering what to do. The person at the switchboard flipped the switch
again, and then the lights came on…and then went out again. This on-then-off
happened about two more times before we finally had to call it quits. The crowd
took the incident really well. I don’t think anyone was really that let down, and,
in fact, it gave a few people the chance to chortle out some lines from a movie
with Clark Griswold. Another person later said that with our crescendo-ing and
descrescendo-ing voices we sounded like people watching a firework display: “Ahhh….
ohhh… AAAAHHH….ohhhh.”
Looking back, I wonder what
the people thought who happened to be sitting at the stoplight at Horsepen and
Monument, the people who happened to be driving by at that precise moment. Did
they catch what happened? Did they chuckle, too, or have pity on us for our
mishap? Or did they perchance catch that when the lights on the Christmas star
and the angels go out, what is left is the cross? Did they see, then, a bunch
of women and men and children looking up at this sign of ultimate love in our
midst and going, Ahhh…oohhhh…ahhhh?
I’d like to think that’s what
they really could have seen: a people who were clearly waiting for something
spectacular, but ended up looking in wonder at the cross. I hope that’s what we
really are—a community of disciples who witness in that way, not drawing
attention to ourselves and our own dazzling displays of faith, not attracting
seekers and guests merely so that they may be a part of “us,” but a people who
testify in word and deed in such a way that they are drawn in to see this light
with us, even if it means we have to stand in the dark every once in a while.
I pray, too, that this is
what we continue to become—a gathering in the cold dark night of the world that
is inviting others to trust alongside of us that the agonizing wait is over. At
long last we are beginning to shoulder sheaves. The Promised One has come and
we may receive him in joy as far as the curse is found.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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