Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
~ Romans 13:11-12, NKJV
For the Second Sunday of Advent, the Church’s focus turns to the messengers who announce the coming of the King. In this role they serve to prepare us as the King’s advance team, as it were.
John the Baptist is the figure who gets the spotlight this Sunday. The ironic thing is that John never seeks the spotlight for himself; rather he points away from himself to the One who was to come.
“A man called John was sent by God as a witness to the light, so that any man who heard his testimony might believe in the light. This man was not himself the light: he was sent simply as a personal witness to that light.” (John 1:6-8, J. B. Phillips New Testament)
To get our attention, these messengers use dramatic language, so, borrowing from the lectionary reading for the 15th, we hear “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”
Sometimes we need to be aroused from our slumber, and this is what God’s messengers do. They shake us from our stupor, they pry our fingers away from what we clutch so tightly by way of (often misplaced) security, thereby allowing our hands to go from grasping to relinquishing – thereby opening to God’s grace and mercy.
In this way, God’s messengers do us a big favor, but the process is seldom pretty. It is hard to give up the sense that by our own strength we will prevail. After all, we are capable and talented people. And on the surface of things, it is true that we can overcome many things by determination and sheer grit.
But there comes a point in everyone’s life when we begin to account for our fragility and dependency.
It is in this part of life – in which many of us find ourselves currently – that can be the most fulfilling, spiritually. For we no longer must pretend to be strong when we’re not, nor do we have to project achievement or worth when we realize that these are things that ultimately have their source in Grace. And we are the recipients of that good and great grace!
Maybe this is a gem hidden within the season of Advent: a summons from God’s messengers to return to the source of this Grace.
Here’s a poem by Sheldon Vanauken, The Sands that I’ve found nourishing over the years -
The soul for comfort holds herself to be
Inviolate; but like the blowing sands
That sift in shuttered houses, Christ’s demands
Intrude and sting, deny her to be free
She twists and turns but finds it vain to flee,
The living Word is in the very air,
She can’t escape a wound that’s everywhere,
She can but stand or yield—to ecstasy
Her Lord is seeking entrance; she must choose.
A thickening callous can withstand the pain
Of this rough irritant, the sands that swirl
Against her thus defied. But if she lose
Her self, Christ enters in—the sharp-edged grain
Of sand embedded grows a shining pearl.