One of my favorite commercials is for a phone company: a guy is walking down a rural road exclaiming how good the reception is even out there. The end of the shot has him saying, “I really don’t know where I am!” Lessons to be heard on this upcoming weekend–the third one in Advent–remind us that God knows where we are/who we are, even if we feel lost.
ISAIAH 35:1-10 looks forward to the restoration of God’s Kingdom, and advises wannabe pilgrims of the signs to look for: “…the desert will rejoice and blossom….waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert…” Even there–especially there–creation rejoices in God’s glory. Wholeness has become the norm, and the desolate shall be renewed. The Holy Covenant shall be honored again. God yet again has made a way where only brokenness has seemed to triumph.
JAMES 5:1-10 preaches patience. As the farmer waits for the rain to sprout his crops, so we also must wait for the good times of the Lord. Some of us feel as though we’re running out of time–so FIX it, already! Advent is the time when the Church announces yet again the hope that God is not yet finished. We wait on tiptoe.
MATTHEW 11:2-11 presents John the Baptizer again, this time in prison. He questions Jesus, “Are you really the Messiah?” Jesus offers him signs in John’s personal desert: “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them…” Many are confused about who Jesus really is. It’s easier to hope for God to act when the sun is shining. The Advent always remembers John’s prison.
“The good news of Advent is ‘Look! Your God is coming!’….Obstacles will be removed and the covenant restored as people and the created order enter the sphere of salvation.” (Noel Leo Erskine, in FEASTING on the WORD, A 1:52,54) I dunno. It seems like I go to a lot of funerals of my friends, and I know that many families are separated. Some of us risk deportation, and microplastics are in our water. And God still makes a highway in the desert!
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
If anyone is there, please join us every Tuesday to be confronted by scriptures assigned to the upcoming weekend by the Common Lectionary; at horacebrownking.com
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