3rd
Sunday of Advent
December 12, 2004
What
do you sigh about?
**sigh** **sigh** Do you think much
about sighing? That and laughter are, I believe the two quintessentially human
things that we do. Sighing is that wonderful union between longing and sadness.
Sighing gives expression to our hope and sacraments the desire deeply into our
own bodies. To sigh is to see the world clearly and to realize that it is not
as it should be. And sometimes, sighing happens when we realize the dream is right
in our midst, right there before us. Like when a mother or father holds their
newborn child for the first time, or you are being held by your beloved - you
are so amazing present to the moment and its promise, that the only response is
to **sigh**. What do you sigh about?
John the Baptist sits in the lonely dark of his prison cell and sighs, and that
sigh comes out a question for Jesus: “Are you he who is to come, or do we
await another?” Jesus didn’t turn out at all like he thought and so
he wonders. And he sighs his question, which if we were honest, is also ours.
“What are we doing following Jesus? After 2,000 years, shouldn’t he
have returned? Shouldn’t the world look a lot more like the kingdom?
Do you know that sigh in your heart? Have you felt it in your bones? I spoke to
a woman whom is full of that questioning sigh. “If God is God and God is
good, then why this particular cross in her life? Why this suffering that is so
difficult to work through?” I knew it in a woman who sighed and prayed that
with the loss of her mother, she would not be crying all day long on Christmas
day. I heard it in a young man whose relationship with his girlfriend just ended
– and not by his choice. If you know about this kind of sighing, then welcome
to this third week of Advent, this Gaudete Sunday. Welcome to the scripture that
rings so true: “Rejoice, for so near is our salvation. Rejoice, because
God comes to us”. For what my intuition tells me is that God comes to us
precisely in the experience of the sigh. In that exquisite expression of longing
and sadness and hope, God is there… And not just there, but there in a way
that brings salvation.
John sighs, because Jesus was not as he thought he should be. There was no axe,
no fire, no brimstone. Just mercy. Just love. Just forgiveness. And then, in the
reply of Jesus, there is another challenge to his faith: “Blessed is the
one who finds no stumbling block in me.” John is blessed, but only if he
ceased to stumble at Jesus’ doing and not-doing, no longer scandalized by
the infinitely patient divine mercy. John is blessed on the condition of his repenting,
changing his whole outlook about God, Christ and the kingdom. In all the places
where he sighed – he was invited to find Jesus’ kingdom. Instead of
exclusion, he was to find God in including folk. Instead of making people pay
for their sins, he was to offer a forgiveness that set folk free. Instead of a
strict scale of justice – he was to find the mercy of God.
I always wondered if John sighed again when his disciples returned with the message.
“Tell him that blind see, the deaf hear… Tell him that mercy and forgiveness
has come…”. Jesus would be the Messiah, but on Jesus’ terms,
not John’s. And so he sighs. Yet, it is precisely that sigh that allows
room for God to be “the one who comes” to him and to us. In the emptying
out of our hopes that a sigh contains, God can fill us. In the sadness that is
expressed in our sighs, joy can follow. Love can fill us, as long as we continue
to sigh. God will come, as He is, on His terms and not ours, as often as we let
that longing and sadness fill our hearts.
What do you sigh for? What are the longings within that create an openness
to God, not on our terms but God’s terms. As you go about these days of
preparation, be attentive to the things you sigh about. For what is present
in that exquisite moment of longing and loss is no less than God himself.
**Sigh** Come, Lord Jesus. **SIGH** Come Lord Jesus, come…