4th Sunday of Advent
One of the great Advent themes is light shining in darkness. On Christmas Eve, we’ll hear a verse from Isaiah: “the people who walked in darkness shall see a great light.” Growing up, that was always the verse for the first day of Advent in my Advent calendars. I think that verse became Advent for me when I was young. If you are in the habit of listening to Handel’s Messiah at this time of year, you probably hear those words in your head, sung in a deep baritone.
I am personally drawn to Advent darkness not because I want to be dour or gloomy, but because I think there's a freedom that comes from being able to admit when things are not ok. I don’t want us to be afraid of the darkness and have to pretend it's not there.
You sometimes can hear this freedom when you listen to the blues. You can hear it when Johnny Cash sings about why he wears black, or Leonard Cohen sings about the cracks letting the light in. People who know they walk in darkness can be close to the Kingdom, for they are the ones weak enough to admit they don't have the light and that they need it.
The darkness is real and it is sometimes very close. This week, my neighborhood newspaper has a very, very dark story on its front page, about a shooting. Two people were killed, less than three or four hundred yards from this pulpit. It was a domestic dispute. One way to shine Christ's light into the darkness starts with simply acknowledging what pain people carry.
Today’s Psalm asks: Who can ascend the mountain of the LORD? who may stand in his holy place?” and the answer comes “One whose hands are sinless, whose heart is clean, who desires not what is vain.”
At first, it may sound like a dark answer, because none of us fit that description. Perhaps none of us can climb the holy mountain, because all of us are sinners, with darkness in our hearts. None of us have what the Psalmist calls sinless hands. All of us know what it’s like to have nursed a vain desire. All of us know what it’s like when the holy mountain feels too high, when God feels remote.
But the Psalm has a refrain: “let the Lord enter.” It is possible to open a gate in our hearts, and let the Lord enter. If we let him enter even moments of great darkness, even times where we seem caught by our own pride and stubbornness – things can change. We definitely don’t have to be perfect, but we have to be humble enough to cry out for help, and then be brave and patient enough to trust.
Ahaz, the king in the first reading, is an example of what not to do. In the story, Israel is divided by civil war. Ahaz is king of one faction, and God sends the prophet Isaiah to reassure Ahaz. God says to Ahaz – I’ve got this. Let me enter the situation. Walk in my ways. Worship me and observe the Torah, which is there to protect and guide you. I will keep my covenant, and all will be well. But Ahaz flinches, trusting more in his own swagger, his own political maneuvers than in the Lord. He fails in faith, courage, and imagination. Ahaz forms an alliance with a foreign king, gets involved in exotic spiritualities and strange teachings, and the civil war just gets worse.
In other words, Ahaz does not do what the Psalm says. He does not “let the Lord enter.” But, despite having every reason to be fed up, Isaiah nevertheless tells Ahaz that a baby is coming, and his name will be “Emmanuel, God with us.” Today’s Gospel quotes this line from Isaiah. This baby is Jesus - God, piercing the darkness, coming down from the mountain so that we might go back up. This baby is born into our mess, to make all things new and break the cycle of sin.
A few days ago, I was consulting with a priest about a frustrating situation. It’s a chronically painful situation, and I felt absolutely at the end of my tether. The priest said to me: you have poverty of spirit; your interior exhaustion means that you’re not spiritually wealthy enough to do it on your own; you don’t have the inner resources to bargain your way out. Suddenly I saw my options differently: there’s no way out of this situation except to let Jesus into it. I’m not sure what will happen now – it might take forgiveness, it might take humility, it might take holding my own plans more loosely – but I can feel that as I surrender, there’s room for Jesus to move in, and there is new hope in the situation.
I believe that it takes patience and it takes prayer, but, in the presence of God, everything has meaning and purpose, even and perhaps especially the suffering. How many apparent impasses in life could go differently, if we brought Jesus into them. Nothing, no matter how awful, is ever a dead end. Anything can be a doorway into deeper life in Christ, if only we cry out to him, and pause to let him in.
Behold Joseph in today’s Gospel. He has every right to be resentful and angry. The unexpected, unknown, unplanned pregnancy with Mary could have broken the marriage. Joseph might expect to be humiliated in the eyes of the rest of the village. We can easily imagine an alternative history, a version of Joseph’s life where the memory of his broken marriage hardens in his heart, a resentment to harbor and nurse into a dark old age. On the surface of things, he has every right to be indignant towards her, to demand – what’s going on with this pregnancy? What have you done? He could argue, he could assert himself, he could seek his future elsewhere.
But that’s not what happens. He hears a voice. We readers know it’s an angel, but I wonder what it was like to be Joseph in the moment – did he wonder whether to trust the dream? If he wrestled with his feelings, in the end, he trusted. The voice said don’t be afraid of the darkness. The voice said that Holy Spirit is moving, even here, even in this bizarre, potentially humiliating circumstance.
He wakes up and he obeys. His trust and obedience took a potential humiliation and let the light in.
And what difference does this baby make? It changes everything that God became human in a vulnerable, specific, historical way. God is with us in the darkness – born in a cave, among the poor, under an evil empire. The baby grows up, and he’s not a military messiah, not a political messiah, not a magician “fixing” everything. He came down, and became one of us, to show us how to climb the holy mountain, how to persevere in love despite suffering and sin, and thereby share in his divinity. We climb the holy mountain when we are open and vulnerable to his presence, when we let him in, and lay down our weapons so that his Spirit can get to work.
This same power is offered to us today in the Eucharist. The same Holy Spirit that conceived a son in Mary’s womb is active on the altar today. In today’s Eucharistic prayer, there will come a moment when the priest prays on behalf of us all:
"May the Holy Spirit, O Lord, sanctify these gifts laid upon your altar, just as he filled with his power, the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary."
Each Eucharist is a second incarnation, a second Advent. It’s the same Spirit active on the altar and in Mary’s womb, the same Jesus present in the bread and wine. May we, like Joseph, trust that this Spirit is real and effective. May we, like Joseph, behold this baby, renounce our pride and our entitlements, and let God enter. May we eat this sacrament, inviting him into our souls and bodies, into every nook, cranny, and dark situation. Then we shall give thanks, for God is faithful. When we invite him in, we shall grow in the grace to live differently and ascend to him.
