Advent 3 December 12, 2004 Reverend Katherine Stiles

Isaiah 35:1-10
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
 
O come Emmanuel
God be with us now
As we wait for you. Amen.

Ann Franklin and I had a recent email conversation and after a few emails she informed me that I was emailing from January 9, 2005. I found it enlightening ?. Apparently I've been living somewhere in the future.

But then today, I took my Crèche out, and was flooded with memories of the past. As I opened the old torn and tattered cardboard box, filled with a mix of packing materials from varying years, I found myself transported to many Christmas's past?each with their unique flavor and surprises. Some good, some not good.

Advent does this ?a kind of time shifting where time past. time present and time future all mysteriously coincide in one moment of remembering, of potential and of possibility.

In our tradition of liturgical seasons, we are, during Advent, given the possibility, year after year of discovering the babe in the manger, of being surprised by the humble and unexpected places our pregnant faith awakens in our restless longings to know God.

And so wait, we anticipate, we prepare for the arrival of something beyond our imaginings. Something mysterious. James asks us to be patient as we wait.

Indeed patience is a virtue and maybe waiting is easy when we wait for something we know will arrive and we know is good news. Then we wait with excitement, with joyfulness.

But John the Baptist is in prison.

Waiting in prison. That can't be easy.

And he doesn't even know what he's waiting for. This isn't a liturgical
re-enactment for him. What might he be thinking and feeling? What might he be expecting? Torture? Death? Liberation? He has spent his life proclaiming the good news, the immanent arrival of the Messiah. He has literally given his life in his commitment to preparing the way, to proclaiming the Advent of the Christ, of Emmanuel, of God come to live amongst us. Perhaps it's only human for him to be a bit afraid, to cast doubt on his faith?

He sends word to Jesus: "Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?" "God where are you?" "Are you for real?"

Even Jesus on the cross called out, questioning God.
Who among you has never felt doubt?
Who among you hasn't longed for a confirmation of a faith which you have perhaps staked your life on?

I know I have.

God where are you? Come, be with us now.

In dark times, who doesn't need the comfort of Isaiah? "Be strong, Do not fear, Here is your God." There will be a time when the earth will flourish, when illness is healed, when the way of peace is opened before us, when the lamb will lie down with the lion, when nations will war no more?
Easy for Isaiah to say?.

But for many, the promise of good news for the future seems a far reach. The waiting is hard. It's hard to wait in prison. In the dark. In the cold, with a hungry stomach, with bombs falling, with our children being killed in war. It's hard to wait with sickness, death, mental anguish, fear and trauma. It's hard to wait in the unknown.

So how does Jesus respond to John's questioning? What does he tell us in response to our doubt?

He tells us to testify. He tells us to look around us and testify to what we see and hear, right here and right now. To testify to healing, to testify to hope, to good news to the blind, the deaf, the lame, the dying, the poor. And to be blessed by the courage to glimpse the vision he offers.

He also challenges us as he challenges those who perhaps are questioning the Baptist.

What are you expecting? What did you go looking for?

Don't expect to find clues to the mystery in ordinary, obvious places. In the reeds blowing in the wind. In the palaces, in the temples, out of the mouths of academics, preachers, those who wear soft robes. The mystery doesn't present itself in ways we think. Who would have expected that this wild man, this Baptist, roaming in the wilderness, eating locusts and dressed in camel hair clothing, would be proclaimed the greatest prophet in history?
The truth is, our expectations only limit us. We can't expect the mystery. That's the nature of it. We can hardly begin to vision a world healed, or how this can happen; and we can get lost in our despair as easily as we could get lost in the wilderness. It takes more than expectation.

It takes courage, imagination, creativity; a bold, daring willingness to believe; and to surrender to the mysterious unknown; and to act out of this willingness; as audacious and absurd as it may be.

And it takes a willingness to face right into the world's suffering to see the good news.

How can we testify to the healing of illness, if we are not willing to sit at the bedside of the sick and dying? How can we testify to good news to the poor if we are not willing to walk with them?

I want to tell you a story about Andy. About finding hope in a place I could never have imagined:

I was working as a chaplain in the burn unit as MGH. It was a terrifying assignment for me. As a therapist I had spent years sitting with stories of psychological and emotional suffering, of trauma, depression, despair, anxiety, loss. I had had to learn to bear my own pain of witness. But the kind of physical pain deformity and horror of a severe burn patient was something I had never been close to. The unit is set up so that at one end of the hall are patients who are less severely burned, more ambulatory, perhaps ready to go home. The mid section are beds for critically ill, severely burned patients who have been stabilized; and then there is a special room, the intensive care area with individual units which they call the bubbles.
They are beds enclosed by curtains of plastic which keep a sterile and temperate environment for the patients. Most of them are unconscious or so heavily sedated they can't respond. The weekly rounds at which we would discuss the patients' progress, or lack thereof, was at the far end of the room so I had to walk by the bubbles on my way to every meeting. I realized that it was days if not weeks before I was able to not avert my eyes from the agony as I passed by.

Then a young man was admitted and the poignancy of his story captured my attention and broke my heart. He was burned over 90% of his body. Particularly his face. He had no nose, no lips, an ear was gone. I couldn't look fully at him. I felt helpless as a chaplain to know how to bring comfort or him to him or his family. I couldn't face my own horror and fear. Shamefully, I managed to busy myself with other patients.

Then he was moved into another room, with no protective bubble. His sedation was reduced and his feeding tube was out. Miracle of miracles he was slowly re-gaining speech, and some mobility in his arms. Then the dreaded day came. He requested a chaplain.

Entering his room, I was filled with my own expectations. I expected to see his pain and disfigurement. And I did. But as I drew nearer, it was something else that grabbed me and became foreground. Looking out at me, was a human being, a spirit: bright bold and courageous. His eyes drew me close to his bedside where I sat as he reached his hand to mine. I couldn't take me eyes from his and was startled by what I experienced as sheer beauty: Framing his brilliant eyes were tiny, fragile and yet oh so present eyelashes. There in the midst of what seemed like the rubble of a war torn bomb site, grew tiny flowers?.eyelashes, new life, resurrection. He held my gaze, tears rolling down both our faces. I realized I was looking into the face of Christ.
I could have never expected to find Christ revealed in such a place, in such a face.

I am humbled by the moments when I am blessed by the surprising, unexpected revelation of God's love, justice and mighty healing in contrast to my own limited and preconceived notions.

Oh for the courage to empty ourselves of our own preconceptions and be filled with the shattering mystery of God's in-breaking. For the courage to truly say "your will, God, not mine, be done"
I am reminded of the advice of T.S. Eliot:
I quote:

"Dark, dark, dark?.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God?..
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought;
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing?"

It is not ours to control when and where and how God will show up.
It is our job to wait. To watch and wait.

And it is our job to testify. To the tiniest miracles. To stay open to surprise. To finding Jesus in the rubble, in the resilience and courage of those who suffer. To live in solidarity and to embrace the compassion evoked in us in response. To find prophets in unexpected places.

And to dare to believe, to wait for, to co-create, and to imagine a world into which God's mighty and mysterious presence will and does flow, the waters of justice will and do roll, and the desert will and does bloom with peace.
And my sisters and brothers this needn't be a full blown faith or belief. Rather it's a faith which incubates right along side our doubt. We are only asked to remain open, to keep watch for the tiny moments, for the the infancy of faith. An eyelash, a baby born in a smelly stable. Keep watch, expect the unexpected. And in defiance, hold onto possibility. The possibility of Emmanuel, of God with us. What other choice do we really have?

In this time-shifting season of Advent, the time when God is not yet and already here, let us wait together in the mystery, and live in defiance of a world without hope. To quote Dr. Martin Luther King who quotes his namesake Martin Luther, "If I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, today I would plant a seed."