Disappointment, Doubt and Jesus

 the mother who is hanging onto her last thread of hope for 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 tragedy happened, why their lost 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 in prisons of despair, the mind moves to doubt. Is Jesus really the Messiah we seek?

We can relate, a bit, 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 people 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 need to still go and tell it on the mountain, Christ(mas) is coming. Just you wait...