“Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am God.” That is the message Dorothy
Day gives to us through today’s reading.
Today is technically the last day of the year. Maranatha, we sing, already in anticipation of the new
beginnings of Advent. Come, Lord Jesus. Come, send us your Spirit and renew the face of the
earth. Advent, from the Latin adventus, literally means coming. “There will be signs of my coming,”
Jesus tells us as we begin Advent. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will
come.”
When we hear the Scripture that is proclaimed during Advent, we begin to see the liturgical season
with new eyes. We begin to see Jesus with new eyes. Jesus was not birthed into this world in order
for us to ooh and aah over innocent new life. His words to us during the season of Advent are
apocalyptic. Are we to believe his coming is meant to change everything? Well…really…yes we
are. And we are the ones who are meant to change it!
It’s not that Advent isn’t about waiting, exactly. It’s just that we perhaps wait too idly – like none of
what’s about to happen depends on us. I am reminded of my own last pregnancy. Don’t those who
are large with child during Advent always conjure up visions of Christmas? Well, I was large with
child during four Advents! But it was that fourth one I remember every Advent. The baby’s due date
was January 1, and I decided that she would be born at the stroke of midnight – the first baby of the
new year, in other words. This had nothing to do with anything except my own greediness for the
gifts that accompany the first New Year baby – diapers and layettes and all kinds of wonderfully
soft and cuddly baby things. So I waited. I sat in my rocking chair and watched the clock. And when
the clock finally told me it was midnight, I got out of the chair and went to bed in a snit.
Four days later, I awoke in the wee hours of the morning with labor pains. I had a doctor’s
appointment that day, so I took my packed bag with me, sure that he would send me directly to the
hospital. But he was late getting into the office, and the longer I sat waiting, the fainter my labor
came. He told me I wouldn’t be having a baby that day. I went home, in a snit.
Our communal penitential laments are great incentive for falling into the doldrums of December.
They are the cries of a people longing for redemption from the oppression and injustice of a
systemically evil world. O come, Emmanuel. Come and ransom us from the imperialism of popes
and presidents. We languish in self-imposed exiles and excommunications. Come and set us free.
And then we’re soothed by age-old prophecies. Patience, people, for the Lord is coming. Wait. All
will be well. John the Baptist continues to cry out in the desert, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” --
and we continue to…wait.
Some of us today are waiting for a return of electricity and heat in our homes. Ree is waiting at the
hospital with her husband. We wait for the short, cold days of winter to pass into a new springtime.
We wait for the wars to end, and the global warming to reverse. We wait for a turnover in leaders of
nations and leaders of churches. We wait for our children to live differently, our grandchildren to
make a difference, and our isms to all disappear into a glorious worldwide lovefest.
And we discount that “coming like a thief in the night” stuff.
On December 8 two years ago, at 1:30 a.m., I was awakened by the ringing of a phone that
normally would never rouse me, and these piercing words struck my heart like a fiery sword: “Mom,
Christopher is dead, he’s dead, Christopher is dead.” The lament went on and on, like a mantra.
The sobs in my son’s voice broke my stricken heart in two as I reached out to soothe him, let him
bury his head in my neck as he did when he was a little boy, until his sobbing was exhausted and
everything was alright again. But I held only empty space in my arms, cradled only a cold intrusive
telephone to my neck. I couldn’t comfort my son. I couldn’t restore life to his son. In the blink of an
eye, literally, life was forever changed. The car in which Chris was a passenger had found an
inexplicable opening in the guardrail that is presumed to be designed to prevent vehicles careening
off of I-270, down ravines, and into century-old trees.
Was Christopher ready for this? He was 17, at the height of his invincibility. He was unchurched,
even unbaptized. “Be prepared,” we’re told, but Chris had never been told that. Like the coming of
a thief in the night, my beautiful grandson was robbed of his very life-breath. And those who loved
him were all rendered helpless. We were all unprepared.
Point being, we’re all in this together. This thing that we call “church” is the worldwide community
for whom Jesus was born, as we will hear when Advent moves into the joy of Christmas. It is every
invincible 17-year-old, every lamenting parent, and every grieving heart in every helpless person in
every place in this entire universe. It matters not what we know or who we know or what we believe
or who we obey, any more than it matters whether we are rich or poor or male or female or gay or
straight or black or white or red or yellow or green, for God’s sake! “The eye cannot say to the
hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’”
That’s the point. We are all God’s children. How, in God’s name, can we keep on destroying one
another or hating one another or discounting one another? How can we blithely sing our lovely
Christmas carols throughout the season of Advent – when we should be preparing for holes in
guardrails – and once Christmas finally arrives say, “Whew, glad that’s over for another year, let’s
get rid of this old tree now”?
But back to my birthing story. Having learned something from my New Year’s Eve experience of
waiting, I went home from the doctor’s office on that long-ago January morning and started ironing
clothes. I refused to sit down! My labor pains returned, and I kept ironing. And late that afternoon,
my daughter was born.
If we do nothing to birth new life into this war-weary world, who will? If we do not bring about the
peaceable kin-dom that Isaiah prophesies, who will? The time for waiting is past. The song of the
turtledove can be heard in the dead of winter if we have but ears to hear, or the sound of angels’
heavenly chorus, or the voice of John the Baptist. Be alert. Stay awake. Prepare.
Each Advent we are given another chance. Will this be the year we birth the Messiah? Will this be
the year we change the world?
Happy Advent.