In my lifetime, I've treasured the season of Advent, a season some Christians celebrate the four weeks before Christmas. Advent helps me get ready for Christ's coming. The joys of God's coming to us in Jesus are wonderfully apparent! But we can also take seriously the darker side of life, knowing that God's light is shining there, too.
This Sunday, in many churches that celebrate Advent, there will be two readings from the Bible that bring to life both the light-filled joy and the deep darkness of the season...
There’s “comfort and joy” proclaimed undiluted and unadulterated in Isaiah 35:1-10 . It breaks upon us like warm sunshine as we hear “The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly.” That speaks of the joy that the ancient Israelites had when they left servitude in Babylon and returned home to Israel: they found the burning sand, thirsty ground and the haunt of jackals now becoming a pool, and a swamp of grass.
But there’s also sternness from the second text, from Matthew 11:2-11, the story of John the Baptist. He is in jail and hears about the miraculous and healing deeds of his, cousin, Jesus. Nothing joyful happens to John – for example, he is not freed from jail. Yet he has been shown hope through the news of good things happening in Jesus’ ministry that he can hold onto; this allows for his own “patience in suffering.”
From these witnesses you hear what it means to live as a believer, stated well by Evelyn Underhill in Advent devotions, edited by Christopher Webber: The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.
The voices witness to the “good bones” of the faith life wherein Christians both honor real life existence with its lonely, dark, cold times and wait upon the joyful work of God. (This work is truly joyful, too — sending the warm sunshine that allows a field of crocus to come up out of the snow and bloom opulently in the spring.) The Advent decoration of choice at Washington National Cathedral – bare pine or fir trees standing sparely in the nave – strikes the balance in the Spirit, with its fresh and fragrant green of life with promise and yet a lack of adornment, like an adult’s sober path through life.
Many folks, including those who are “churched”, don’t seem to know the way of both let-loose joy and focused resolve. I read one church group writing about its leadership as discouraged, worried and “losing its way” as a result of clergy misconduct, and this sounded like an “anti-text” to Isaiah’s words that no one will “go astray” on God’s Holy Way. Leaders hoped for “renewal” yet also cited “questions of relevance” affecting “church attendance across our country” just as if they were a desert that could not rejoice and blossom or the dry land that would never become glad.
But Isaiah writes in chapter 35, verse 8, of a holy way where it’s practically impossible to go astray and a way “home,” insured by God’s love and care. “Home” did not mean perfection, as Paul Duke writes. Yet, he continues, the prophet (Isaiah) declares that desolation, disability, grief and sighing for home will all be swept away, overtaken by luxuriance, liberation, health, strength, safety and multitudes, fools included, singing their way home –and God will send us flowers on the way!
Do we sense we’re on a Holy Way? Do we understand that God’s direction on this way means we will not lose our bearings? Do we find that the things of hope bring enough resolve to endure whatever life throws along the path? I find that many folks (including Christians) at this time of year are mainly given to giddiness, frenzy and "irrational exuberance") –that is, unstable joy and no true sense of “home” in all the frantic Christmas preparations.
The faith life announces seasonal joy, yet wraps it in the conviction of “home” and the assurance that God provides and continues to provide the sunshine no matter what or when the storm. We open our arms.. ready for the sunshine. As Bruce Springsteen sings it, “I’m waitin’, waitin' on a sunny day , gonna chase the clouds away, waitin’ on a sunny day….
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