...the mother who feels like
she is at her last thread of hope with a "problem" child; the spouse
who stares at the wall wondering what happened to the marriage;
…the sick person who wonders
when, if ever, healing is coming; the child who struggles to find some way to understand
that Mom won’t be here this Christmas;
...the survivors of the
storms of life, who wonder why the fire happened, why their loved ones were
there.
December, the church’s season
of Advent, highlights the disappointments of life in a stark way. The month in which we are supposed to celebrate
Hope, Peace, Joy and Love seems to instead be filled with news or memories of
just the opposite. And when disappointments persist to those locked into
prisons of despair the mind moves to doubt. Is this Jesus really the Messiah we
seek?
We can relate, just a little,
to John the Baptist who was so fired up to announce the coming of the Messiah, but
who finished his days in prison, waiting for the end of his life which ended
with a decapitation. How exactly was Jesus being the Messiah for his prophet, John?
Are you the One we have been waiting for,
or is there someone else? John’s inquiry
of Jesus becomes our question.
The mission of Jesus then and
now, and the concurrent mission of the Church, is to encounter life’s
disappointments and doubts with pictures and stories that people with eyes of
faith can see. The child who was to die but now is scheduled to graduate from
college. The men and women with “incurable”
cancer who instead become cancer “survivors.”
The poor being fed and clothed. The unjustly punished receiving justice.
Advent’s message is that if
you look with eyes of faith, you will see just enough; just enough to see
disappointment filtered through the lens of Joy; just enough to replace doubt
with Hope. The almost hidden beauty of Advent is the promise that Christ is real,
here still, and coming again. Until then
the faithful, today's prophets, can be excused expressions of doubt generated
by cruel disappointments, for staring at the empty manger and wondering, Jesus,
where are you? Until then the prophets
keep going to tell it on the mountain, Christ(mas) is coming. Just you wait...
Shalom,
Pastor Bill
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