What are we waiting for?

For the past several weeks, we have been in an intense period of waiting.  Like we do so often in life, the wait has been accompanied by a counting down of the days until the big day.  On Thursday night, the wait ended!  Stars Wars is back!

Of course, in the Church, out Advent waiting doesn’t end until this coming Thursday evening.  But what exactly are we waiting for?  Christ lived and died, as I saw on a clever church sign, long, long ago in a Galilee far, far away.  So we wait to celebrate that event, yet it is not simply a birthday celebration.

Our readings tell us why our celebration is worth the wait. The prophet Micah describes the Messiah not as simply one who brings peace, but one who is peace – “He shall be peace.”  This is the peace with which Jesus lived his life, the peace with which he laid down his life, and the peace that he breathes into each of his disciples when he first sees them after he rises from the dead.  It is the same peace that, before the Eucharist, the priest extends to all of us, and which we – perhaps much more casually and thoughtlessly than we should – extend to each other.

It is not a peace that ends all war, ends evil, and ends all violence in the world.  It is not a peace that guarantees our bodily safety against those who wish to harm us.  It is much greater than all of that.  It is a peace in knowing that God has taken on our human nature to show us a love that conquers all fear, despite the fearful things that continue to surround us.  It is a peace based on our assurance that God, in his great and provident love, will surely provide us with all that we truly need.  If we really understand the profound nature of this peace, our sign of peace would be much more than a simple greeting.

And, as we hear in the Gospel passage, this profound peace leads to profound joy.  The greeting of Elizabeth hints at this joy.  Even more, the depth of this joy is shown by the reaction of John the Baptist, who even in Elizabeth’s womb, leaps for joy at the presence of Jesus in the womb of Mary.  And that presence is the source of our profound joy.  For Jesus did not just live and die long, long ago in a Galilee far, far away, but remains with us today, tomorrow and every day, here, there and everywhere.  

Thus, it is God himself who guides and inspires, strengthens and encourages us.  It is God himself who loves us despite our sins and failings; God himself who celebrates our successes and mourns with us in our losses.  Christian joy transcends our highest highs and our lowest lows.

As we come to the end of Advent, our season of patient waiting, may our celebration of Christ’s coming into the world fill us with profound peace and joy, now and forever, Amen.

Hot Sausage and Mustard

Our reading from Isaiah this morning (Is 25:6-10) brings to mind the opening of the movie, Oliver.  “Food, glorious food, hot sausage and mustard…”  Juicy, rich food, indeed!

Throughout the Bible, food is seen as a sign of God’s providential love.  Through Isaiah, God images heaven itself as a great and bountiful feast of juicy, rich food and choice, fine wine.  Jesus uses this similar imagery in several of his parables. 

The miraculous feeding with a few fish and loaves that we also just heard (Mt 15:32-37) is the only miracle – other than the resurrection of Jesus – that appears in all four gospels.  In fact, it appears six times, for both Matthew and Mark relate two occasions of this miracle. 

In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the first of the works of mercy which the Son of Man considers a marker of those who were to be admitted to the kingdom was, “when I was hungry, you gave me food.”

In an economy of subsistence agriculture, desperate, life-threatening hunger is just one bad harvest away.  Virtually everyone in Jesus’ day would have known times of extreme hunger.  Thus, the presence of food was an occasion to give great thanks and praise to God.

For me…not so much.  Like the air that I breathe, food is just there.  I’ve always known that the next meal is only hours away; snacks are even closer!  In a very real sense, I take food for granted.  And this is my great loss.

For whenever I take anything for granted, I begin to think that it is my right to have it.  I deserve it.  I’ve earned it by my hard work or my goodness.  Ultimately, this becomes true of everything that comes my way.  I deserve the good food, the big house, the fancy car, the warm clothes, and all the comforts of life.  And if I feel that I deserve everything I have, why should I be grateful?  Who would I need to thank?

When I am completely lost in this world of ingratitude, I find that I even take my life for granted.  I wake up in the morning and immediately start thinking of all the things I must do, the people I must see, and the places I must go.  I’ve taken for granted, of course, that the day would be there, and that I would wake up to live this day and be able to work on my oh-most-important tasks.  I have taken my life for granted.

My ungrateful world, while seeming at most times to be a most warm and pleasurable place, is actually cold and discomforting, for at its center is a stony heart, shut off from the love of God.

When someone threatens what I take for granted as my just desserts, I become indignant and angry.  I strike out at those who threaten me or take what is mine.  And yet I am never satisfied with what is mine, for I see others who have even more.  Why is this more not also my rightful due?  I become grasping and greedy as I crave to have the things that others have, the things that I don’t have, yet must have. 

Advent is a season to reawaken my heart to God’s great love, to break the chains of ingratitude which bind my heart in selfishness and greed.

Advent prepares us to celebrate the greatest gift we could possibly receive, a greater gift than life itself.  In a few short weeks, we will celebrate the gift of salvation, of God-become-man, God sharing our humanity that we may share God’s divinity.  We could not have done this by ourselves, and we did not do anything to deserve this wonder, for this gift was tendered “while we were still sinners.”  It is a gift of unimaginable, unlimited, unconditional love.

Opened up to gratitude, we become even more aware of this great love God has for us.  A virtuous cycle ensues. 

Aware of God’s great love, we begin to see our very life as a gift from God, an occasion for thanks and praise.  We begin to see our possessions as precious not because they are our right, or because they make our life more pleasant or easy, but precious because they are gifts from our all-loving God, the source of all happiness, the source of all joy.

As see our lives and our possessions as precious gifts, gifts which God continues to provide to us each and every day – the day itself being God’s gift – we become generous in sharing these gifts with others, serving Christ who comes to us each day in the guise of one of his children in need.

In sharing God’s love today, we prepare ourselves to receive the culmination of God’s gift, the promised final coming of Jesus, bringing the fullness of God’s kingdom to earth.

This time of year, we wish people a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.  We don’t seem to have a similarly apt adjective for Advent.  Here is my thought:

Have a most grateful Advent.