This week, as we have been coming up to the fourth Sunday of Advent, a favorite poem of mine, written by an American-Palestinian poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, has been rattling around in my head.  It goes like this:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it until your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say,
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

     In this late Advent time, I’m struck both by the poem and by where it comes from- the experience of a woman in exile- from a place so full of conflict and of course, so dear to the heart of our faith.  Its mood, both of tenderness and of grief, touches me, perhaps especially in the midst of the frantic busyness of these weeks, of this dark time of year when there is so much pressure to be so full of cheer all the time.  Many of us, I know, have our personal experiences of loss, particularly pointed and poignant in this season.  Some of us surely feel a kind of failure that we fall so far short of what is expected of Christmas.

     And then, corresponding with the darkness of the weather, there is the darkness in the world – this relentless war, the violence against the poor almost unnoticed, the willful ignoring by our leaders of the terrible urgency of environmental disaster.  And so I wonder if there is something here that we could learn.  What can we do with all this?  Will we learn kindness?  Will we learn something so basic and challenging as compassion?

     On this fourth Sunday of Advent I am filled with longing – a longing to make sense of it all, and to be redeemed, to redeem the times that we live in.  I’m looking for the way of being prepared and of preparing the way, as the poet says, “deep inside.”

     The collect for today is one of my favorites in all the cycle of the church year, and it speaks of being prepared: “Purify our conscience, O God, by your daily visitation, that our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.” 

     How can I be a mansion prepared deep inside?  How could I be a true and welcoming home for Christ?  How could we be a true and welcoming home for Christ at Christ’s coming?

     It seems that the answer to this question partakes both of hiddenness- of things that are stirring deep down in the dark- and of surprise.  I’m reminded of the old monastic story of the steward who closes the gate for the night and then hears again a traveler banging at midnight and who says, “Oh Jesus Christ, is that you again?”

     But that’s the question, isn’t it?  The question that we have to ask in interactions with our fellow parishioners, with our soup kitchen guests, with those with whom we live and work¼Jesus Christ, is that you again?  In my family, my lover, my friend, even in my enemy, in the stranger, even in the animals and plants, and perhaps most mysteriously, in the depths of ourselves- is that you again?  We are to ask this question in times of beauty and pain, of sorrow and joy, as the winter light thins around us.

     Purify our conscience, says the collect, our conscience which is surely the depth of us.  Earlier in Advent we have heard the call of John the Baptist, denouncing those who come to hear his preaching as a “brood of vipers.”  The repentance he preaches is harsh and demanding.  Is the daily visitation, the purification, something that has to do with God pounding away at our sins?  Sometimes, for sure, we need to wake up – we need the harsh and bracing voice of the Baptist to make us pay attention.  But often, also, I think the issue of purification has to do just as much with “scrupulosity,” as the old writers call it, that nagging sense that we are not quite right, we have not quite done enough, we have not quite done it right.

     Perhaps the purification for which we pray also involves letting love cast out fear and allowing a kind of spaciousness in which we can receive God’s grace and healing.  Perhaps we need to let go of the shame of not being ready, especially when Christmas arrives right on the heels of Advent 4 like it does this year.  Perhaps we need to let go of our plans, our sense of how it should be, how we thought it would be, in order to see what is and recognize the daily visitation that is coming.

     Perhaps the purification of our conscience involves the willingness to stay open, to be vulnerable, to be grateful, to love where and when we can and to receive the love that is given us.  And also it involves choosing.  It involves choosing to turn towards the light as best we can in the dark times, choosing to serve life and to reach out for it hungrily, to know our need and the world’s need for life and light, and to understand that at the deepest level our need and the world’s need are not separate but intertwined.

     The failure to reach towards life is Ahaz’s sin.  Our first lesson is taken from the eighth century before the common era, when the kingdom of Judah is caught in the midst of power politics, threatened by Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel who want support against the dominant empire of the day, which is Assyria.  The prophet Isaiah calls on Ahaz, the king of Judah, to trust in God, but Ahaz, anxious, has decided to make a pact with the Assyrians.  “I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test,” he says, in a kind of a false piety.  Isaiah tells him that he wearies God with this, and God will give him a sign anyway, even if he will not ask.

     “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and you shall name him Emmanuel.  Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread of, will be deserted.”  The threat from Syria and Israel will pass, but far worse will come from the king of Assyria, because Ahaz in his fear has invited him in.

     What is the meaning of the sign that God will give, and who is the young woman?  We don’t really know.  Scholars are agreed that this is not a direct prediction about Jesus.  Rather, it has something to do with the time of Ahaz.  Perhaps she is one of his wives, and the child, perhaps, is one who will grow up to lead the people of Judah.  Whoever it is, the child will be a sign that God has not deserted God’s people, and perhaps also, the sign has to do with a woman who is willing to give birth in such uncertain times.

     The king, fearful and cynical, will not ask for a sign.  He’s not willing to be changed by what comes; he refuses.  He has decided to go with a safe bet, the protection of the empire.  He’s closed to the daily or even the extraordinary visitation.  He cannot allow himself the faith to be surprised, and he cannot grow larger – with disastrous consequences.

     In contrast, Joseph has a faith that enlarges.  He is a righteous man, a keeper of the law, and he has his life planned.  Then, when his expectations for his life and his marriage are dashed by the news that his betrothed is unexpectedly and improperly pregnant, he has a plan for how to get out of a bad situation: he will divorce her quietly.  Notice how the angel speaks to Joseph’s fear, and perhaps even to his scrupulous conscience: “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife.”  Don’t be afraid to act against all religious and moral teaching, all propriety.  Don’t be afraid even to act against your own sense of betrayal and outrage and hurt.  “The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”  This is God’s visitation, God’s purpose.