The Third Sunday of Advent - December 15

Against the Data
Isaiah 35:1-10
Matthew 11:2-11

One of the primary qualities of Advent is preparation. This season is given to us as a span of time during which we can prepare. Preparation. We are preparing, of course, to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

But what sort of preparation does that entail? We are preparing not just for the birth of a baby. Nor are we preparing just for the Christmas celebration. Although those celebrations, both here in church and elsewhere certainly require a lot of preparation.

Something I read this week suggested that we are preparing ourselves to think about things in new ways, to experience new things.

We are preparing for the incarnation, the coming of God in flesh into our world. We are preparing ourselves to welcome the presence and power of God as a tangible reality in our lives. If you step back a bit, that’s really an unbelievable, unimaginable event.

So one way to think about Advent is as a time during which we prepare ourselves to accept the impossible, to welcome the unimaginable. It is a time when we try to break open the rigid and limited expectations we have of our lives and of our world so that we can accept the impossible reality of the incarnation.

As you may know, the folks to whom Jesus came in first century Palestine were expecting a very different Messiah. They had been preparing for centuries for the coming of the Messiah, and they knew what that Messiah would be like, a great leader who would restore their people as a great nation. Jesus was not what they expected. Hence John’s puzzlement in today’s Gospel. They thought they knew exactly who was coming. But Jesus didn’t fit. Emmanuel? God incarnate? In their midst? The Son of God whom they could touch and see? A human being who brought the very grace and power of God to their tables and their byways? That was not even on their radar. It was not only beyond expectation, it was beyond imagination. Unbelievable. Impossible.

We have the advantage of knowing that the event that lies ahead is unbelievable. So how do we prepare? One way might be to read today’s passage from Isaiah over and over and over.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom. Glorious and impossible. The eyes of the blind shall be opened. The eyes of the literally blind and the metaphorically blind shall be opened. Those who adamantly choose not to see shall have their eyes opened. That just doesn’t happen. The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer. Not just walk or shuffle through the day, but leap. And the tongues of the speechless sing for joy. Those who cannot speak and those who choose the isolation of silence shall know and sing joy. It’s unimaginable.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The arid wilderness, a place where people and animals find only death, shall produce streams. The thirsty ground, parched and longing for water, shall become a spring, a source of water. A wilderness, a place of desolation and death shall be transformed into a creative and life-giving place.

This passage from Isaiah is rich and beautiful poetry. One article I read said parenthetically that Stephen Spielberg could provide great special effects to go with it. And that’s how we view these images isn’t it? As either beautiful poetry or something impossible that could only be portrayed with special effects. But not real.

This quotation comes to me second hand, but the great Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has written: “Israel’s doxologies are characteristically against the data.” This passage from Isaiah is one of Israel’s doxologies. It is a hymn of praise from God’s people Israel. “Israel’s doxologies are characteristically against the data.” God’s people experience and praise God “against the data.”

 The commentator who quotes Bruggemann goes on to speak to a contemporary audience (paraphrasing and expanding upon Barbara Lundblad’s comments at Working Preacher) : We see and hear the data of our own world every night on the news and every morning on the front page of the paper. Add to that the data of our own lives: waiting for the test results from the doctor, mourning the death of a loved one, wondering if we’ll make it through the next round of lay-offs. We know the data of our lives and the world around us all too well and we, too, long for a doxology that is against the data.

Jesus’ incarnation is not just a doxology that is against the data; it is an event that is against the data. It was against all expectation or possibility back then. And it really still is. God in human being? It’s still against the data.

And with the incarnation of God in the world comes the transformation of the wilderness of our lives and our worlds into creative and life-giving places. The impossible, the unimaginable made real.

Advent is a span of time given to us to try to wedge open the rigid and limited expectations of our lives and our world so that, when it comes, we can welcome and accept the impossible, the unimaginable, birth of God with us.