Year B / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 63. 16-17, 19. And 64.2-17 / Psalm 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19 / 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 / Mark 13:33-37
“Where are you, God?”
Sisters and brothers, isn’t this the question we and many have asked repeatedly during this pandemic? Asked in the face of a virus that has wrecked the world and our lives, of constant mask-wearing, of sickness and death, of staying apart and staying apart from loved ones. Everything we know as life has changed drastically.
Haven’t we asked this question because we are bothered and bewildered, hurting and grieving, confused and fearful, worn out and exhausted? Yes, where is God?
Our readings today do not ask this question. They insist on naming and lamenting God’s hiddenness. “O that you would tear down the heavens and come,” cries the prophet Isaiah. “Restore us, Lord,” the Psalmist pleads, “let your face shine that we may be saved.”
Our readings demand that we face the honest truth that this year is not okay, that our world is not okay and that our lives are not so okay. They challenge us to stop pretending and get real about life and faith.
This is an unusual way to begin Advent. As odd as it is, it is maybe the right and necessary way especially this year. After all, doesn’t Advent insist that we confess honestly about what we are seeking at this time and always – God alone?
Jesus makes this same demand in our Gospel reading. Not just to be alert and watchful for the Lord’s coming. But that we embrace the necessary practice of waiting for God. Necessary because we need and want God to come to us.
God will however come at the anointed time that is best for us. And, God will come in the manner God wishes for us. Isaiah imagined God to be big and powerful and able to do mighty things to save the exiled Israelites. Maybe this is how we have hoped God would also be in this pandemic – to come and solve all our problems and console all our pains.
The Christmas surprise we know is that God came as little and least, with less. Is this the God we really need at this time? Yes, we believe – God to be with us, to be like us, and most of all to be for us.
We cannot welcome and receive this God unless we wait with honesty in the present realities around us and that we are involved in. Wrestling with a broken world. Struggling with our hurts, fears and confusion. Grappling with the seeming hiddenness of God.
Yes, let's be honest. We are here at this time, in this pandemic. And here we are praying as we begin Advent for God to tear down the heavens and come down to us. Come to show us his face so we shall be saved (Responsorial refrain).
Let us wait then and let us pray and prepare this Advent to welcome the Lord. But more so, let us allow ourselves to receive something good, something true, and something beautiful that comes to birth in us. Comes to birth to love and save us.
Indeed this coming to be is simply divine hope dawning in us that we are God’s. For as Isaiah reminds us today, you and me, and all the world, are being held by God. In His hands, we are being moulded and shaped. This is indeed how God is with us in Advent – preparing us to receive Jesus who reveals Him and Him alone at Christmas. We must watch out for this grace of God labouring in our lives, preparing us for Jesus. Do we then really need anything else this Advent?
So, let us “be watchful!” as Jesus asks us to be. Will we?
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: pinetrest (Internet)
photo: pinetrest (Internet)
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