Advent 1, Yr A
The Rev. G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.
Look, Wait, Hope
The Christian way is a pregnancy.
That is, our Christian way is marked by looking, waiting, and hoping. Pregnancy is waiting on a child to come. Pregnancy finds parents looking for signs from the mother’s body that will tell us how the child is growing inside, what the child is doing, and when the child will come. Pregnancy is a period of hoping in which we pin our dreams to the unborn child.
Adoptive parents know about pregnancy too because adoption is looking, and waiting, and hoping and looking, waiting, and hoping until the child comes. Folks who are not parents know about pregnancy too because we have all had friends or family who have been pregnant, (at least our mothers were pregnant, right?) and we know that pregnancy is sort of a group effort in as much as everyone can see the growing of child and mother, and we all grow hopeful while we wait on the new life to come into our midst.
The Christian life is looking for God. We look for Christ inside of ourselves and each other, and we look for Christ to come again. We watch one another grow in faith as we struggle and bounce along our spiritual journey. We look for God in the world too. In a way, all of the moments that make up a day are moments full with a potential appearance of God. Maybe we’ll see some meaningful movement of God in an encounter at grocery store this afternoon, or catch some passing glimpse of Christ in a handshake shared at the peace this morning.
The Christian life is placing our hope in God. Who doesn’t long and hope for some sighting of God in our lives? We hope that some light of God will shine in the darkness to lead us along the way. We hope that the holy concoction of our faith, mixed with God’s infinite mercy and goodness, will help us breathe easier breaths and become satisfied with the lives we have instead of pining away for the lives of our neighbors, whose grass always looks greener than our own.
The Christian life is looking and hoping and waiting. Sometimes, it feels like it is mostly waiting. I have heard pregnant women in their sixth and seventh month say the same thing.
A friend of mine began to answer the question, “How are you doing?” the same way over and over again when she was nearing the end of her pregnancy.
“I am just waiting on this child to come,” she would say in a laborious tired tone.
Day after day and season after season, we, Christian folk, are found waiting on Christ to come among us, and the waiting can become laborious for us too.
For instance, it is Advent again. Which means that another year has passed us by and Jesus Christ has not returned for his second coming. And again, we hear the Advent passages from the gospel in which Jesus warns us, “[to keep awake because we do not know on what day our Lord is coming.]” The coming Kingdom will come on, in fact, “like a thief in the night” so we need to live ready, says Jesus.
Everyday is pregnant with the possibility of an appearance of Christ. So we watch, we wait, and we hope. And here we run into the difference between real human pregnancy and the pregnant character of the Christian life.
Mothers give birth after nine months. The child does come.
It does not; however, always seem to work out that cleanly with the arrival of Jesus Christ in our lives. We wait and wait, and look and hope, and the world still hurts, and we still hurt, and life still feels incomplete, and Christmas comes crashing down upon us, and leaves us tired and beat up, and we barrel and race toward Easter and another Advent comes, and still we have not seen the Christ child.
I wonder if we’re looking, and waiting, and hoping in the right way. That is, I wonder if our looking, and waiting, and hoping hasn’t been colored and tainted by our rote observance of the passage of time and seasons. What would it look like for us to observe Advent as if we were doing it for the first time?
See if my two year old daughter can help.
Gracie is going through a hide and seek phase.
A few nights ago she and I were in the kitchen. I was cooking supper and she was coloring at her little table set up in the corner. Kristin was upstairs working on the computer.
I was quietly stirring some sauce on the stove when Gracie said suddenly, “Daddy, where’s mommy?”
I said, “I don’t know sweetheart.”
Gracie said, “She’s hiding. I’m going to find her.”
When Gracie goes hunting for someone who is hiding she assumes a funny, looking posture. Her shoulders get just a bit tense and she walks a little bit crouched, and she has a sneaky look in her eyes as she pokes around the house.
She looked in ridiculous places for her mother. She looked under the dining room table, and when she walked into a big empty room where you and I would immediately know Kristin was NOT present, Gracie searched all over, looking deep into every empty corner.
She came back to the kitchen after a few minutes and said, “Daddy, I can’t find her.” Just as she said that though, we both heard footsteps on the stairs. Kristin was coming down for dinner. Gracie’s face lit up like only a child’s face can light up and she whispered excitedly, “She’s going to get me!”
And she backed herself b
Gracie looks, and waits and hopes like a two year old. Her looking and waiting, and hoping, is goofy. She’s silly, and she looks in places I don’t bother to look because I know better. She hopes she can find her mom, and then her mom finds her, and she tries to wait and hide but she can’t hide because she doesn’t know how to hide.
Every moment is pregnant for Gracie. She’s only two, so she is always on the cusp of finding something she’s never found before and she’s also always on the verge of being found by her mother or me because we’re always looking for her.
Advent is the pregnancy season. It’s the official waiting period before the child arrives on Christmas. In Advent, we put on mother Mary’s blue, which is the preparation color, and we set aside four weeks for slowing down and getting quiet before the eruption of Christmas.
I know we’ve done it all before, but what if we try to practice Advent like we’ve never done it before? What if we try looking, waiting, hoping, as if we were two year olds? What if we put down our preconceived notions, our tired rote rhythms and our certainty, and for the next four weeks try to look for God with the innocent eyes of a two year old who doesn’t know any better than to look for God all over the place- even in the empty spaces?
The child may well be born today. Christ may well come among us in the next few moments -if only we have eyes to see.
Who knows, we may hear the footfall of God coming to look for us…. if only we can slow down, be quiet….Look. Wait. Hope.