3 Advent 2016

Advent 3 Year A
December 11, 2016

    When my family drove out to California this past summer, I was, as I always am, fascinated with the desert landscape.  There is something so incredibly beautiful about it to me… the barren landscape can go on for miles, and then suddenly there is a burst of life in the form of a flowering cactus, or some other desert flower that has managed to survive the harsh environment.  While gazing out the car window one afternoon, a saw some young people riding horses with such freedom and abandon, that I wanted to ask them what they felt  like as they rode these magnificent animals… and then as the sun set, and temperatures dropped, it seemed yet again, that the desert became a different place full of new and different mysteries….

    Maybe one of the reasons I like the desert so much is because scripture uses the image of the desert to talk about the life lived with God.  The desert is a powerful and even dangerous place.  I would not want to have my car break down, and I was aware that I kept checking to make sure my cell phone had coverage… it would be really scary to think about not having a way to tell someone where we were if we needed help; fortunately, the car was in good shape and phone signals were relatively strong…

    But, still… what a beautiful place and for me a much loved image of the spiritual life… Advent reminds us that our lives sometimes are dark places where there doesn’t seem to be much light or even perhaps life… cold and darkness sometimes feel like they might actually take over… it is easy to lose hope, easy to let the cold and the darkness take over… our prayer life might seem dry and brittle; it might feel as though God hasn’t spoken in a while…

    I posted a meditation on facebook the other day, written by my favorite Jesuit author, Fr. James Martin, SJ.  In the meditation, he speaks of the angel’s visit to Mary to tell her of the child that she will give birth to…. He wonders what it was like for Mary after the Angel left her… did she have other experiences of God’s grace and love between that time and Jesus/ first miracle at the wedding in Cana?  We don’t know… for many of us, there might be one incredible experience where we feel close to God, and then what feels like nothing for years.   The punch line of the meditation is:  “And then the angel left her” is where we live… Isn’t that the truth?  We have to trust that somehow in the barren landscape of our spiritual lives that somehow God is present and acting in our lives…

    But like the desert, if we open our eyes and watch, we can see signs of God even in the darkest and driest of places.  If we let the culture we live in dictate our spiritual lives, we are going to find ourselves in a dangerous place where God is absent… but if we let ourselves be guided by God, if we let ourselves actually be disciples, then signs of life will come; we will find ourselves sustained in the in between times…

    What might that look like practically?  I think our favorite camel hair wearing prophet can be of help here…. John the baptist was in prison, which must have been a horrible experience for him… and yet, he hears stories of about Jesus, and so he sends his disciples, to ask…. Are you the one?  Are you the one in whom we are to hope?  What does Jesus answer?  “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. “  These are the signs of life in the desert we sometimes find ourselves in… these are the signs of hope… signs that God is still God, and is acting in the world we live in… it is up to us to listen to the Spirit which is in us and help make these things happen… we are the ones whom God has chosen to do God’s work.  You and I are the ones who provide life in another’s desert.  By being disciples of Christ, by feeding the hungry, helping the poor, bringing sight to the blind… all of this, work that we have been given to do, work that runs counter to much of what is around us… work that means God’s kingdom is here on earth…

    What might you do to help live in those in between times?  Prayer, study and worship are necessary for us to live in desert times; they are the ways we keep ourselves spiritually alive… they are what we use to keep ourselves fed and how we receive guidance…. They are how we learn how to be disciples and how we are given what we need to be life giving for others…

    God’s kingdom has both come and is yet coming… Jesus has both come and is yet coming.  It is hard to live in a time of yes and not quite yet… there are still poor among us; the world sometimes acts as if God is of no consequence… But as disciples we know that we are still working every day to make the kingdom of God visible in a vast desert… and we know there are signs… and we know that there is so much more to be done.  We must allow ourselves to be open to the possibility that God still speaks to us.  Our challenge today is to look past the things that aren’t real, the things that are placed in our way to inhibit our truly working for the good of others, and enter those sometimes empty and dangerous places… it is there that we will encounter Christ; It is there while we are acting as Christ that we might even find our own deepest needs and longings are answered.  What will others see when they speak of us?  WIll they see dry dangerous place with no hope?  Or will they see that we are heralds of a kingdom where the poor have good news given to them?  How might we help others know Jesus today?