Commentary on Lectionary for December 12, 2010

Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35:1-10; Psalm 146:5-10 or Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

I can tell, as soon as I sit down to meditate, if I am not at peace. My breathing gives me away; and that feeling in my stomach. No use pretending. The temptation is to make the meditation a wrestling match, like Jacob’s famous match in Genesis 32. --Fight hard to keep the anxious thoughts at bay, to empty my mind of them, to NOT let fear take me over.

And how surprising it is to discover how little the event is that can throw me out of peace, that can dis-ease me! It can be a single word, or a look, or even a silence when I expected a response. Or it can be a doctor’s appointment, an unwelcome task or warning, a traffic ticket, or even a downturn in the stock market.

Today’s readings give hope to the unpeaceful, the overwhelmed, and the suffering: all that will be turned around. Isaiah says it to the exiled: Not only will you come back from Babylon to your beloved Judah, you will do it on a highway—a SAFE highway, and one that belies the fact that it is in the middle of a desert because there will be water and blooms!

My daughter, on her way to India, had to land in Jordan and stay the night. She couldn’t get over what she saw when she looked out of the window of the hotel the next morning: nothing but desert! And yet when we visited my son in Arizona last May we saw cacti in bloom—a beautiful sight. The difference was, of course, WATER.

And so what will make peace bloom once again within us? It is the coming of God into our lives, as subtly as a gentle hand laying a wet cloth on our fevered forehead, or as dramatic as being thrown from our horse. John the Baptizer in Matthew thinks it is happening in his time. He sends his followers to ask Jesus: “Are you the one or should we look for another?” And Jesus answers, in effect, “Go tell John what you have heard and seen: everyone is getting healed; suffering is being alleviated; what is lacking is being reversed!” It’s a new, a different kind of Exodus—from dread and pain to peace and joy.

But, we respond, like a child whose sore finger has just been kissed: “How come it doesn’t feel better NOW?” James has an answer in today’s excerpt: Wait for it! Or as he puts it: “Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.” James points back to prophets like Isaiah, who prophesied the return from exile that took years to be realized, and we will soon hear those wonderful words from the book of consolation: “Comfort , comfort my people! (Is. 40:1)”

And so I sit for meditation, in peace or un-peace, and I wait as patiently as I can, sipping confidence from these preachers of the word, these singers of God’s works, like Mary in Luke, suffering the discomforts of her pregnancy yet able to sing to her cousin Elizabeth: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”

I take the breath into my body and feel its presence there, and wait. The message was clear: Where you are doesn’t matter—in desert or in chaos. Wait for Him. He will find you.