All Along the Watchtower - Advent Day 1, Sunday, December 3

December 3, 2006 by djackson.

Lectionary Readings:  Isaiah 1.1-9, 2 Peter 3.1-10, Matthew 25.1-13

Walter Miller’s science/spiritual fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz posits a post-nuke America plunged into a second Dark Age.  In the high deserts of Colorado a band of monks seeks to preserve the ancient learning of humanity and the more-ancient yearning for the return of Christ.  They look forward to a new dawning of knowledge and even farther forward to the coming of the kingdom.  On the fringes of this community lives Benjamin, a solitary old Jew, a decrepit hermit of untold age who considers himself the embodiment of all Israel and preserves within himself her hope for Messiah.  After centuries a young scientist appears on the scene, a genius whose scholarship holds promise for the return of twentieth-century technology.  As this prodigy delivers a lecture to the monks on his schemes for rebooting humanity, the crazy old Hebrew hobbles up the center aisle and stares with hungry hope into the scientist’s eyes.  Miller writes,

His face clouded.  The glow died.  He dropped the arm.  A great keening sigh came from the dry old lungs as hope vanished.  The eternally knowing smirk of the Old Jew of the Mountain returned to his face.  He turned to the community, spread his hands, shrugged eloquently.

“It’s still not Him,” he told them sourly, then hobbled away.

Today the Christian church begins Advent, the ancient observance of a season of waiting.  As we enter the waiting of ancient Israel from the curse of the serpent in Eden to the cry of John at the Jordan, we avoid taking Christ for granted by recalling the weary centuries before he came.  We also rekindle the eager waiting of the early church which lived in daily expectation of Our Lord’s return, avoiding complacency in a dark world by recalling our desperate need for Jesus to come and complete our salvation.

Isaiah saw a society so sick that it couldn’t be spanked because the entire spiritual and political body was already one giant bruise.  Far past added punishment, God’s people needed healing that could happen only with the coming of Messiah - the Anointed One who would also anoint with the healing oil of forgiveness and transformation.  Peter envisioned a sceptical secular society which would deny our world any escape from the treadmill of self-inflicted suffering.  Jesus stood between these times as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s hope and the basis of Peter’s faith and gave one word of admonition:  keep watching.

The false Christs of science and psychology and celebrity will continue to come and call for our alliegance.  The imposter-Messiahs of consumerism and commercialism will keep calling us to seek salvation in presents rather than God’s gift.  Let us, like Miller’s Christian monks, heed the words of the Hebrew prophets and refuse to see salvation each time the world cries, “Behold, He is in the wilderness,” or “Behold, He is in the inner rooms.” 

Let us enter the darkness of Advent . . . and wait.

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