SUNDAY ADVENT VESPERS
Sansbury Care Center  

As I’ve been reflecting on today’s readings, readings very familiar to all of us who have enjoyed many decades worth of Second Sundays of Advent, something struck me this year that I’ve never seen before.  Perhaps because of our new commitment to developing a planetary consciousness, I noticed a shift from one text to the next in today’s readings:  from Isaiah to Paul’s letter to the Romans to Matthew’s account of the beginnings of John the Baptist’s ministry.  From where I stand now, it seems unfortunate that this shift of consciousness goes backwards. This sequence of readings seems to reflect the sorry story of the development of human consciousness throughout the millennia that we have been present here on Earth.

By now many of you may be asking, "What on earth is Claire talking about? "

Let me try to explain.  Scholars believe that this section of Isaiah was written  about 700 years before the birth of Christ, Paul’s letter to the Romans was written about 60 years after the birth of  Christ,  and Matthew’s Gospel was written about 20 years after that.

So today’s readings span a historical period of about 800 years.  That’s a long time. 

People change a lot in 800 years, as we are aware when we ponder what life was like when Dominic founded the Order 800 years ago.  I’m sure that when Dominic was walking his way from Spain to France to Rome and back again, he never imagined the modes of transportation his followers would be using 800 years later.  Very likely Dominic never imagined he would even have followers 800 years later!

The sacred scriptures of a people are, I think from a human perspective,
    the gathering together of generations and generations of struggle
        to describe, to image, to put into words,
                    the unfathomable mystery
                        of how God is present with and to that people. 

Different groups of people experience God differently because different groups of people have different experiences of life.  We only come to know God through the experiences of life that are given to us.  So in coming to these readings this year I am aware of very distinct ways of imaging the presence of God among us. 

Isaiah’s metaphors are amazingly imaginative,    
        full of hope, full of wonder: 
        On that day, when God is fully present,
            wolf will be guest of lamb,
                leopard will lie down beside young goat,
                    Calf and lion will browse together with little child,
                        babies will play safely on cobras’ dens, |
                            there will be no harm or ruin on all the mountain of life. 

 How is the kindom of God imaged by Isaiah?   As full harmony among wild animals, domesticated animals, and humans on God’s holy mountain, in God’s holy seas.

 760 years later, we hear from Paul a quite different image of the presence of God: 
            “May God …grant you to live in harmony with one another…
                    so that together you may with one voice
                        glorify the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

 In Paul it seems that everyone but the humans have left the stage.  So what happened to the animals, to the natural world, to the wildness we found in Isaiah?  Thanks to the dualism introduced into the world by Greek thinking, the natural world largely disappeared from images of the presence of God. 

 This situation appears to get even worse a few years later, when Matthew is describing John crying out in the wilderness in an effort to make the wilderness straight and orderly. (I can’t help but think of Dorothy Briggs’ question:
                                                    “What’s wrong with wild grapes?”

Matthew even has John using nature images to threaten people with a punishing God,
            a God imaged as cutting down both trees and wheat and burning them with unquenchable fire.

Fortunately, Jesus reversed this shift of consciousness in a positive direction.  Jesus was one who recognized and delighted in God’s presence everywhere in the world:
                in the lilies of the field,
                    in the new life hidden within seeds,
                            in little sparrows, brooding hens, plodding donkeys, and valiant mustard trees –
                                 and yes, in people too.

 Jesus knew that only in this broad holistic span of consciousness could the creator God really be known. Our brother Thomas Aquinas saw this same truth: Thomas taught that there are two modes through which God is revealed:  the revelation that comes through the natural world, and the revelation that comes through Scripture.  Of the two, Thomas wrote,  the revelation that comes through nature is primary,  because the natural world is our first teacher about the amazing presence of God in all that lives.

 We need to stop from time to time to remind ourselves
        that we are the first generation in all of human history
                to be able to know through actual photos
                    the full magnificence of planet Earth, of our Milky Way galaxy,
                        of some of the other billions of galaxies in the universe.

In these visual revelations our generation has been gifted
                with amazingly expanded images of the presence of the Holy One:
                        of the One whose creative power is infinitely beyond
                                anything we can even begin to fathom.

Awesome Creative Mystery is evident every day if we would but notice.
It is as obvious as the pull of gravity that holds the solar system in perfect balance moment to moment,
    and as intricate as the tiny fingernails all in the right places on the hands of a newborn infant.

 This Advent, as we watch and wait in darkness
for new inklings of Incarnation in the least expected places,
may we dare to go big and may we dare to go deep.

May we launch out beyond our familiar realms of awareness,
beyond images of a narrowly human world,
to grasp, as Isaiah did, a larger view:
            a view of ourselves as small elements of a mystery far bigger than ourselves,
                        a view of us humans as totally dependent
                            on the other species and the other elements for our very existence.

As we continue to integrate this planetary consciousness,
may we care as we never have before
for the water, the air, the forests, the mountains,
for all the creatures large and small who are threatened with extinction.

May we give expression to our care consciously, one habit at a time,

reversing the mindlessness that wastes, that pollutes, that destroys the natural world.
Only thus will we truly discover the fullness of God’s presence among us,
the fullness of Incarnation.

--Claire McGowan, OP
December 9, 2007

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