Advent Visions: Present and Not-Yet Present
| John Wilkinson |
Third Presbyterian Church |
| December 16, 2007 |
Isaiah 35:1-10 / Matthew 11:2-11 |
I have recently finished teaching a class at Temple B’rith
Kodesh, on the parables in the gospel of Luke. It was a fascinating
experience on many levels. It allowed us to continue to build
a deeper relationship with our friends there, and it also allowed
us to look at our own faith commitments in new ways.
In fact, it was a good reminder to me, at least, to take the
time to take a new look at things that seem familiar. It became
clear to our Jewish friends, reading, for some of them, the
gospels for the first time, that the group of followers that
had congregated around Jesus – even at the point of his
death and resurrection – expected him to come again very
soon. Jesus spoke of it. His followers planned on it, in fact,
relied on it for their very ability to survive in the interim.
His eminent return gave them hope.
It is now a part of our theological core – “even
so, Lord, quickly come,” we sing on a regular basis. “He
will come again to judge the quick and the dead” is at
the heart of our creedal understanding. I believe it, though
I am not always sure where it fits in my theological priorities.
For too long, religion has been accused of thinking about the
second coming so much that it ignores the first one. “So
heavenly focused to be of no earthly good,” the criticism
sometimes goes. This Advent season is about tension and paradox,
so the real invitation is not to choose, but to live somewhere
in the middle.
One of the things that the Bible does is testify to imagination,
the God-given gift of looking ahead, of envisioning and imagining
an alternative future while living in, and working to change,
the very present.
To live in the present is not to be defined by it. To live
for the future is not to dwell only for it as well, thus ignoring
present reality. And yet we are called to imagine.
It was surely the task of the prophet, perhaps the most difficult
task, shared later by John the Baptist, shared, perhaps, by
some of us. Describe how things are, and take great risks in
doing so.
We do not want to hear bad news, nor do we want to be the ones
to announce it. And whether speaking or hearing, cultural anxiety
or religious anxiety immobilizes us from action. Things are
so bad in the world, or so bad in our city, or so bad in the
church, or so difficult in your life or mine, that we do not
know where to begin. And since we do not know where to begin,
we do not even launch the process of imagination, of envisioning
the “new thing” that God persists in doing.
So thank God for the prophet. When the people perceive that
they are living in a desert, when we perceive that we are living
in a desert, Isaiah imagines that “the wilderness and
the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
and rejoice with joy and singing.” The weak and feeble
– defined physically, defined emotionally, defined spiritually,
shall be made strong. Those of us who are afraid, afraid of
anything, and a world that lives in fear, as our world does,
will not fear, will be strong. The fear of difference, the fear
of warfare, the fear that drives warfare, all gone. “For
waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the
desert…”
Walter Brueggemann writes that “without God’s powerful
word and powerful presence, both creation and disabled humanity
are lost, hopeless and condemned…” (Texts for
Preaching, Year A, pages 20-21)
But we are not without that word. It is here and with us, tentatively,
provisionally. That is what we will celebrate in nine rapidly
advancing days. The possibilities of imagination are with us
already, in the story of that little baby, and the vision he
will plant deeply within us. It will take so much to bring it
to full fruition, perhaps even his return.
I was at a denominational meeting recently and a man asked
me if I was optimistic about the church, with its chronic conflict
and numerical decline. “No,” I said. “I am
not optimistic. But I am hopeful. If I didn’t have hope,
why would I even bother showing up.”
Brueggemann writes that Isaiah’s vision is a “healing
alternative to the church’s grim despair and to our modern
sense that no real newness is possible. (Isaiah) invites
us out of our managed rationality to affirm that God does what
the world thinks is not possible. Advent is getting ready for
that impossibility…”
Educating children in the Rochester City Schools seems to be
so challenging, and yet week after week, year after year, members
of this church show up to tutor children.
Hunger seems to be an immovable mountain of despair. And yet
even yesterday morning, a whole bunch of Third Church members,
including a wonderful group of children, loaded boxes with rice
and soup and tuna and a candy cane or two to be delivered even
on this snowy Sunday.
The tension and paradox between the present and the not-yet
present, between what is and what shall be.
Auden’s great “Christmas Oratorio” examines
a Christmas celebration with despondence: “Once again/As
in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed/To
do more than entertain it as an agreeable/Possibility…”
But even in the face of an intense absence of imagination,
Auden looks at the present moment as a glimpse of what will
be: “In the meantime/There are bills to be paid, machines
to keep in repair,/Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being
to redeem/From insignificance.”
Theologian Joseph Sittler wrote: “I do not think we are
in a very good situation historically. I do not believe our
relationship to the earth is liable to change for the better
until it gets catastrophically worse. I have no great expectations
that human cussedness will somehow be quickly modified and turned
into generosity or that humanity’s care of the earth will
improve much... But I do go around planting trees on the campus.”
(Grace Notes and Other Fragments)
Here is the promise, that “the ransomed of the Lord shall
return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall
be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and
sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Whatever imagination we sense we have been given must be invested,
invested wildly and extravagantly. We are called to tell the
story, again and again and again. We are called to plant trees.
We are called to redeem time from insignificance. And we are
called to sing, to sing even if we sense no music in us, because
it is surely there.
He is coming soon, and he is here even now. That is the song
we are called to sing, to join the shepherds and angels and
all creation, in praise and hope and possibility. Amen.
(Followed at 10:45 by the Chancel Choir’s offering
of Respighi’s Laud to the Nativity.”)
