First Saturday of Advent
In our readings today, the Prophet Isaiah says” No longer will your Teacher be hidden, but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher, While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: “This is the way;walk in it” when you would turn to the right or to the left.”
Tomorrow, the Second Sunday of Advent, we hear the great proclamation of John the Baptist — not only by his words, but by his very life. John, cousin of Jesus, was the one who announced him.
I spend a great deal of time with children — well, actually, not as much time as my heart would like, but still they are the major focus of my life. But, in Advent drifting of thought, I think back to my first year as a first grade teacher at St. Joseph School in Manchester, MO. Certain that the world had been waiting for me to get my teaching certificate — on fire with the possibilities of justice and the new world that is created when real social action becomes liberation theology in the work of educating a mind…I was on fire.
While I was very well prepared for the work of an educator, the reality of 40 six year-olds in one classroom and one teacher (me) had it’s days of being rather daunting. Catholic School salaries being what they were, I supplemented my income with as many hours as Assistant Manager at K-Mart as I had in the classroom. It was what it took to be able to educate — the passion that I knew was the deepest calling of my life.
In the first Advent, one of the children who would become a life-long correspondent of mine, brought me from my lofty philosophical tower to the real stuff of God. As would be the first of hundreds of moments that the prophet is disguised as a student, I have carried this question across the miles of decades. After what I considered to be a delightful experiential teaching on the prophecy of Isaiah, John the Baptist and Jesus, Michael tugged on my skirt and said, “Can I ask you one important question?”
“Of course” I replied, “What are you wondering about?”
And so began my young teacher of wisdom, “Well, if Mary was about to have the baby…I am wondering how she got on that donkey and rode all the way to Bethlehem. My Mom is going to have our baby and she can’t get in the car.”
I swallowed the peals of my interior laughter and looked at the faces of those other 39, who seemed to think it was a perfectly logical question and I knew that they were waiting for something I didn’t have. I skirted the question with “I really have no idea, but it’s a great question. I guess it’s really true that Nothing is impossible with God.”
For more than 30 years, Michael’s question keeps this season real — and leads me to sit in the wonder of pondering what it was like to be the cousin of Jesus. For children, I am certain, know things that adults have masked over with the urgencies of text messages that demand attention and email in-boxes that refuse to be emptied. They know the reality of what it takes to be the one who has heard the Prophet Isaiah and to accept the challenge of being the one who announces the difference Jesus will make in the world. Of course John understood before the leaders of faith could entertain the significance — children know what it takes to be who we are called to be — whether that is the challenge of riding a donkey or getting into a car. It’s not about ease — it’s about call.
The First Saturday of Advent is time to take stock of where we are on the journey — our willingness to believe that we are led and that the voice is in our ears, if we can log off long enough to listen. It is there, if we are only able to hear the one in our midst — too often, it’s just simpler if we just “get through” the next week, the next event and the next thing on the “to do” list — until a diagnosis, or change, or death, or natural disaster — stop us in our tracks and reverse our attachment to the list, that we might listen. The message — the voice in our ears — hasn’t just arrived, but something from the outside leads us to the inside.
That’s the story of this Advent, for me — becoming aware of the still small voice that hasn’t just arrived, but has gone from the drone in the background to the forefront. So tonight, as I stand at my annual ritual of welcoming Upper School students to our Christmas Dance, and chaperoning their young desire to put on the clothes, the behaviors and the attitudes that the adults around them have shown them is the way to autonomy, I am going to look for the next John/Joan the Baptist. I sure she or he will be there.
For, it is the promise of God, that the prophetic voice will continue to be proclaimed, if only we have the ears to hear, the eyes to see, the heart to understand — and if we are not thrown off by the long hair, life in the desert and the diet of locusts and honey. Imagine how our lives would have been changed if the people of faith had judged John for what he wore on the outside and missed the message from the inside.
Happy First Saturday of Advent — May you discover the prophet in your life to lead you to “Be Our Light’
