What is the sound of Advent?
**Sigh** ***SIGH!***
It comes out, that sigh, often unbidden. And it comes in many forms.
There are those amazing sighs:
• when you hold your son or daughter, grandson, granddaughter for the first time. ahh..
• or when you cuddle in the arms of your beloved. ahh..
There are those difficult sighs:
• when you find that a relative or good friend has cancer or ALS or one of many un-treatable diseases.
• when you read the newspapers about another senseless act of violence on the streets of St. Louis
• when the faith that has sustained you all your life no longer gives the same sense of comfort and security as it had, and when God is seemingly silent when you need him the most…
In those moments, we do a very human thing. We sigh. It is our body’s way of sacramenting the longing that is in our hearts for something more, something better. It is the way we express our sadness for what is not, and our yearning for what should be all at the same time.
What I would like to propose to you is that a *sigh* is the sound of Advent. We look at the world with eyes of faith, and we sigh. We read the paper, and we sigh. We even look to our church and we sigh, because it is not as we would like it to be. Like the farmer, we await the yield of the kingdom and we sigh. When is God gonna come back? How much longer do we have to endure? I am tired of waiting and wanting and longing and aching. *sigh*
It is the sigh of John the Baptist, as he sits in the lonely dark of his prison cell and wonders: “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? If so, then welcome to the third week of Advent. Welcome to the figure of John the Baptizer sitting in the cold dark of the prison. Welcome to Gaudete Sunday whose message is: “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- God is there…
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 – of chaff being burned in the fire, 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.
**sigh** It’s the sound of an Advent people. 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 sadness and yearning is no less than God himself. Look for the moment of the sigh this week. And then enter into its call for you, for us all. “Come Lord Jesus.” **sigh** “Come, Lord Jesus!”