December 23, 2007
Advent 4, Matthew 1:18-25
Our Collect for today asks for our consciences to be purified by God’s “daily visitation.” But it’s hard to tell from the language of the prayer whether we are asking God to visit us daily, or assuming that it’s already happening. Perhaps like so many things in our prayer book, it’s intentionally vague so that the words will be meaningful and comforting to us whatever situation we find ourselves in. Whether we feel God’s presence in our lives or wish that we did.
The folks in our readings for today couldn’t have had any doubt about God’s presence in their lives. God is speaking, acting, and visiting all over the place.
In our Old Testament reading, God gives Isaiah a “sign” to share with the people -- the birth of a son named Emmanuel to a young woman. In Matthew’s Gospel, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream. The angel calms Joseph’s fears and gives him clear directions: Take Mary as your wife, and name her baby Jesus.
How is God visiting us?
A few days before my ordination, I came in here to spend a couple hours by myself and walk the labyrinth. I wanted to prepare myself as much as I could for what was about to happen and to ask God to be with me in it. John has a few CDs here that we use for the Monday night contemplative prayer group, so I found one with Taize music and skipped ahead to one of my favorites. It’s the first one on the insert in your bulletin – we’ll sing together it a few times.
O Lord, hear my prayer
O Lord, hear my prayer
When I call answer me
O Lord, hear my prayer
O Lord, hear my prayer
Come and listen to me
It was perfect – just what I wanted to say to God. Come, be with me in this thing I’m undertaking. This huge and wonderful new thing.
O Lord, hear my prayer. After a little while twisting and turning on the labyrinth paths, I began wondering why is it that we’re always asking God to hear our prayers. All over scripture we’re promised that God hears the prayers of our hearts even before we know what they are. And yet somehow, it’s hard to feel confident about that. Is it that we don’t trust God to hear us? Or that we don’t think we’re worthy of being heard?
O Lord, hear my prayer. I have always loved this Taize chant, but for the first time I wondered if it might be wearisome to God to hear it over and over. Like my daughter trying to get my attention when I’m talking on the phone or busy with something else. “Mommy, look at me. Mommy, look at me. Mommy, look at me.” She wants to be truly heard, truly seen, and she’ll keep repeating herself until she is. It isn’t enough for me to just acknowledge her while I continue doing whatever it is that I’m doing. What she needs in these moments is for me to stop – to turn away from whatever is preoccupying me – and to get down on her level, look her in the eyes, and give her the acknowledgement that she needs to show that I’ve really and truly heard her. It reminds me of the gospel story of the person who keeps knocking at his friend’s door to get food, or the widow so persistent with the judge. And, like the friend and the judge, more out of annoyance than anything else, I finally turn and give my attention to her. Enough already – I hear you!
Surely God isn’t like that, needing to be bugged into listening to us?
When I call, answer me. It sounds so plaintive, so sad, yearning for an answer that we aren’t getting. As if here we are praying, praying, praying and God is too busy to get back to us. More likely than not we just aren’t paying attention, aren’t listening, aren’t ready for the answer. So why do we keep crying out for God to hear, listen, answer, when really it’s we that need to do these things?
O Lord, hear my prayer. O Lord, hear my prayer. What am I really praying for? What are any of us really praying for? What lies at the heart of the words we speak to God?
Come and listen to me. Come. Listen. Again, we’re asking God to come when God is already here, everywhere, with us always. Asking God to listen when God is listening already – before we even open our mouths. Maybe we’re worried that God is too high, too transcendent, too other, to care much about us.
So what are we really asking for? Maybe not really for answers, but for a feeling that we are being heard and understood. For knowledge not just in our heads but in our hearts that God is present. For an awareness of God’s love and a certainty of God’s presence. For God to be with us.
The next Taize chant that caught my ear is the second one on your insert. We’ll sing it a few times together.
Eat this bread
Drink this wine
Come to me and never be hungry
Eat this bread
Drink this wine
Come to me and you will not thirst
Eat this bread. Drink this wine. It’s been turned around on us this time. Here God is giving us something to do. Instead of us telling God to hear and listen and come, God is telling us to eat and drink. To take God in, make God part of us, fill our lives with God. The bread and wine are the physical substances of the Eucharist, of course, but more fully they’re Jesus, Son of God, who is the Bread, the Vine, the Light and Life of the world. So how can we make God more a part of us?
Come to me and never be hungry. Come to God and we will never be hungry – we will never be alone. God isn’t out there, apart from us, something that is unreachable, untouchable. God is with us. We aren’t children that are unheard and so have to repeat ourselves over and over. We are children of God who are loved and cared for, heard and listened to, and answered.
Eat this bread. Drink this wine. Come to me and you will not thirst. Sometimes I wake up at night just dying of thirst. It seems to spread over my body – my eyes are dry, my skin feels dry. And I long for water with every fiber of my being. It’s like an ache, a hole in me. And even though at that moment I feel sleepy and lazy, and the idea of getting out of bed to get a drink seems too hard, it really isn’t. It’s do-able and simple, and as soon as I make that little effort to get up and walk 15 feet to the sink, it quickly and easily changes how I feel.
Maybe our thirsting for God isn’t that much different. An ache in us for wholeness, a desire to be part of something bigger and better than ourselves, a need to be completely loved and forgiven and accepted as we are. And God is promising that he can forever fill all of our longings. If only we will come to him. So how do we come to God?
As if on cue, the next Taize song that I hear is the third one on your insert. Sing along.
Stay with me
Abide here with me
Watch and pray
Watch and pray
Stay with me. That’s how. We stay with God, abide with God. We seek God out and let Him into our lives, into our hearts. Give him some space in us.
Abide here with me. We can stay right where we are, abide right here. God isn’t asking us to go into a monastery or to change who we are. It’s here, where we are, that God is too. We just need to invite God to be here with us, rather than inadvertently keeping him out by our inattention or our busy-ness.
Watch and pray. Watch for God at work. In us, in others, in the world, in nature, in scripture, in church. Anywhere that we are, God is; and if we are watching, noticing the details, we’ll be more likely to see that.
Watch and pray. And pray. However that might happen for us. There are different love languages, and different prayer languages. But it’s all love, and it’s all prayer. However we love, and however we are in conversation with God – talking, singing, listening, in silence, sifting through scripture or poetry, playing with your children, being grateful, living in the moment, noticing beautiful things. We just ask God to be in that with us, or better yet, remind ourselves that God already is.
Someone recently told me that for years they’d been going on walks with their dog and having great conversations with him. And only years later realized that all that time they’d really been talking to God. When it comes down to it, I’m not sure the specifics really matter all that much.
Although it can happen at any time of year, our wondering whether God cares, our searching and waiting for God to be with us is an Advent quest. A quest that has probably been going on since the beginning of humankind. A quest so common that it has been built into the church year. We wait, along with Isaiah and Joseph and Mary and all the other players in God’s long story of working in the world. And in just a few days we can once again rejoice with them. Because Christmas is a big part of God’s answer to our waiting, our searching, our lostness. Jesus is, as promised in both the Old and New Testament readings for today, Emmanuel – “God with us.” In Jesus, God became one of us – became ultimately, perfectly, fully with us. Living, breathing, and dying as one of us. Both an answer to our fears that we are alone and an assurance that we never will be.
How is God visiting you as we reach the close of this Advent season of waiting?
Amen.
ER