The mystery and wonder of Advent

Advent begins in the dark, says Fleming Rutledge.

The authentically hopeful Christmas spirit does not look away from the darkness, as you will note later in the presentation, but straight into it. The true and victorious Christmas spirit does not look away from death, but directly at it. Otherwise, the message is cheap and false. - Fleming Rutledge, "Advent Begins in the Dark,"

                                                                                                         

“The season of Advent reminds us that there is something on the horizon, something holy, the likes of which we have not seen before.

It’s possible to miss it, and then to realize what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God’s back fade in the distance.

So in the Advent season, we need to stay put, to linger in the darkness, to ponder, to watch, to wonder, to wait for the light.”  [Jan L Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas]

To wait, and ponder, and wonder.

 That’s what we’ll do this morning.

As John Bell put it in Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers:

You, the God of all time, Want us to wait/ For the right time in which to discover/Who we are, where we are to go,/Who will be with us, and what we must do./…

“He came down from heaven,” the creeds and hymns tell us.

It’s a journey that begins in mystery.

A Presbyterian pastor once tried to catch something of that mystery in a parable.

It goes like this:                                                         

Once upon a time, when the pain of mankind had become unbearable and the human cry could be heard all the way to the throne of God, before the presence of God a congregation of the heavenly host gathered to plead with God on behalf of the pilgrims still on earth.

They met to elect representatives on earth who had suffered most, who out of the pain they had endured could most eloquently communicate to God the terrible human dilemma and need on earth.

        “We want someone,” they said, “who can explain to God what it is to be despised and hated. 

We want someone who can describe for God what it is to be starved, beaten, tortured, robbed, maligned and killed. 

We want someone who can explain to God the loneliness of a person when he is rejected by his fellow humans.”

And so they chose a Jew….

But they decided that they also needed someone to explain to God how hard it is for human beings to do the right thing, and how easily they slip into sin.  So they chose, to accompany the Jew, a convict, a prostitute, a liar, and an unfaithful husband.

As the committee moved off toward the throne of God, a little child spoke up.

        “I am too young to argue with God,” the child said, “but I have a question for him.  Ask God if He’s ever been a child himself.”

So they took the child along too.

When they arrived at the throne, God listened to them patiently, and asked a question of his own:

        “What would you have me do?”

They held council together and agreed that God should become a man if only for a season.  And the little child said,

         “Then first he must be a child.  Let him know our dependence on others.  Let him know how it feels not to belong.”

Another member of the committee spoke up and insisted that God must be “a real man” and not just a divine being in human disguise.

         “He’s not to put on his heavenly robe when he gets tired or sick, or hurt…let him be thrown in with shady people and seedy publicans and super patriots.  Let him know human injustice.”

Then someone else shouted for attention.  It was not enough, he said, for God to live as others lived.  If he was truly to partake of the human condition, God must learn what it is like to die.

After the committee had departed, God weighed the demands carefully.

And then one day, he appeared on earth, under exactly the conditions that had been prescribed for him.  [Rev. Herbert Meza, First Presb. Church, Texas City, TX]     

It was a journey that began in mystery.

The mystery of heaven, where God saw how desperately the world needed him.

And he loved the world.

But that love had to be embodied.                                                              

God had to be embodied, or else we people with bodies would never in a million years understand about love.  (Jane Vonnegut Yarmolinsky in “Angels Without Wings”)

But it fills us with wonder, that the Power of all Creation would stoop so low as to become one of us.

With wonder, that God’s love is so immense that he wanted to come down,

to come down and touch our ground, and touch our flesh.  -Madeleine L’Engle (A Stone for a Pillow)