December 6, 2009 Des Moines

Luke 1:68-79

“Who Are We Waiting For?”

It is said that the Mullah Nasrudin once took shelter in a Dervish’s cave. The Mullah had been wandering lost for a long while and was quite thirsty. Now that night had fallen he huddled in the Dervish’s cave, quite terrified.

After a while the Mullah asked the Dervish for water.

“I have none in the cave,” said the Dervish. “But go down to the spring. It is not far.”

The Mullah was much too frightened to venture out into the dark night alone, even for a drink of water.

“Well, then I will go and bring you water,” said the Dervish at last.

“No! Don’t go out and leave me alone in this dark cave!”

“Here is a knife,” said the Dervish. “If something attacks you can defend yourself with it. But really, you will be quite safe here.”

While the Dervish was gone, the Mullah began to imagine all sorts of evils which might enter the cave and attack him. When the Dervish returned with the water, the Mullah shouted in horror and began to stab the air with a sword.

“Halt!” screamed the Mullah.

“But it is only I, the Dervish. I have returned with your water.”

“That is what you say. You could be any sort of demon!” And the Mullah continued to defend himself against his imagined horrors.

“This is only fear,” said the Dervish. “It is causing you damage.”

“I agree,” said the Mullah. “But once you catch fear, you have it. And the bad thing is, you don’t even have to have it yourself to suffer from it!”

“So I see,” said the Dervish. And he went in search of another place to spend the night. (A Sufi Tale)

Fear. Moreso perhaps than any ailment, it is the infection that most threatens to destroy us. Injecting into our field of vision an inky darkness that keeps us from seeing and transforms any unknown or anything not understood into an enemy that we slash at and seek to destroy. Inhibiting, intimidating, blinding and wounding, there is so much fear in our midst. We are afraid that money will run out before our days do. We are afraid of what the test results might reveal. We are afraid of where terrorists might strike next. Fear deprives countless of the privilege of community; the privilege of encouragement; even the privilege of rest. Fear erects prisons within which the frightened huddle and hide and eventually starve themselves to death. Fear is an enemy of faith, and our world has lived under its threat within and without.

It’s dark in this place that we live, and we grope our way along, unable to see what is real.

Welcome, then, this season of light -- few, at first, but growing, and confirming that the darkness really hasn’t overcome it. The footsteps of Advent typically pull us forward. If living is anything like scaling a cliff, Advent is that series of knots in the rope by which we pull ourselves along. It is the season of expectation that whets our appetite for what will be.

The word itself means, literally, “coming”, and so the forward orientation makes some sense. But Advent has never been about simple expectation -- blind groping for whatever might be coming. It is, at its core, the season of deep remembrance when we trace again the lines of life as God intends it to be.

It is not, after all, our faith that it is merely “a future” that is coming. Ours is a faith in a coming order that is shaped and colored and pieced together according to God’s imaginative design. And Advent is the season when we remind ourselves exactly what it is that we are expecting -- an order of creation any less than which we have every reason to refuse.

I put it like this because there has always been some confusion involved in this wait. The confusion begins with a misconception about what we are waiting for, but that problem invariably leads to a misconception about who we are waiting for. Remember that, while messianic hope always had some connection with the people’s understanding of how God was involved with them, it was almost from the beginning a hope woven inseparably into their sense of political impotence and insecurity. The “messiah”, according to this expectation, would be less of a spiritual powerhouse determined to ground and center and reconnect children of Eden with the Garden, than a military one – a heavenly, perhaps, but quite muscular heavyweight bent on knocking the legs out from under Israel’s enemies and oppressors.

Little wonder, then, that after all this time of waiting, after all this pain of being consistently rubbed under the thumb of one conqueror or another, the figure of Jesus – who seemed maddeningly more concerned with love than leverage; more interested in righteousness than roughness; more concerned with reconciliation than retribution; heavenly peace than earthly power – would have struck many as a pathetically underwhelming candidate. For those who are anxious and ready to open a can of “Whomp-em”, a warm cup of “Love-em” is hardly satisfying.

So who are we waiting for? And will he find us any more malleable in our willingness to accept what comes than he found our ancestors generations ago?

As a people who, in different but no less desperate ways, have suffered and endured a world so much less than it was intended to be, it is appropriate that the renewing image come to us from the lips of another who had long been waiting and all but given up hope; appropriate that it come in the form of meter and rhythm and eighth notes and tune.

Have you ever noticed how musical Luke is? If Matthew is preoccupied with lining up prophecy with fulfillment; with paralleling the old and the new; if Mark wants to convey the power of the movement; and if John wants to paint pictures and expound with philosophical eloquence, Luke clearly likes to sing. When Mary begins to tell Elizabeth about the role she has been assigned, she breaks into song: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." When the shepherds are abiding in the fields, watching over their flocks by night, it is music that interrupts the quiet of the dark -- a multitude of the heavenly host singing "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" When Jesus is presented in the Temple, it is through song that old Simeon pronounces his own benediction: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word."

And here, it is music that breaks Zechariah's silence. Zechariah who, with Elizabeth, his wife, was old and fruitless and well past any window of opportunity, and yet who finds himself staring at an answer to prayer that he couldn’t have believed would come. Music, appropriately enough, for what better language for joy and appreciation? "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel," he sings, "for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.”

The song and passage are, of course, about John. But whatever it says about him, it has more to say about God -- what God is like and what God will do. It is that element of the text -- the insight into God's will and activity -- that is of most interest to us. And what it says about God might make for us sweet music. In God, sings Zechariah, the faithful will be saved from their enemies; saved from the hand of all who hate them; rescued from the hands of their enemies so that they might serve God without fear; bathing in God’s mercy and basking in God’s favor.

Hopefully by now we have lived long enough to understand that our worst “enemies” are not those who bomb us or otherwise attack us, but are simply those that blind us to the grace and capacity of each other as God designed us; that veil the truth and deceive us into believing that difference is demonic and homogeneity is heaven. Against this present darkness, such will be the day of the Lord. Such is the shape -- the pattern -- of what lies ahead.

Zechariah sees it, and sees its way prepared through the fragile and vulnerable one he holds in his hands. “You,” he whispers and sings, “will prepare the way.”

To be sure, it is preparation still under way. There is roadwork still going on; still pathways under construction that will enable the way of Jesus to pass through our midst in fullness. We are partners in that sometimes bitter, sometimes grief-filled, sometimes maddening preparation. It is not ours to do alone, but it is our work in which to share and take an active part. It is discouraging at times, and the night, for all our efforts, still seems deep. But while it is not yet that day, out there along the fringes of the horizon, there is a dim but discernible glow. The times have been painfully hard. They have been marked by hate and conflict, sickness and death. But the assurance of God is that the dawn is breaking; that emerging light will overcome the darkness that is our estrangement from one another and God -- an estrangement whose only name is death -- and guide our feet into the way of peace.

Come quickly, Lord, and bring the peace of that even now breaking dawn. Amen.