December 8, 2005
Possibilities
Advent 3B
Let us get one big Advent mystery out of the way at the outset. Bishop Katherine Schori told her people out in the Diocese of Nevada that they need no longer speculate about “why” the pink candle in the Advent wreath on this third Sunday. It’s there, she said, because Mary wanted a girl.
The cosmologists tell us that if we look through the great Hubble telescope coasting weightlessly somewhere out there in orbit, not only may we see all the way to the edge of space, but to the edge of time, as well.
Space and time, we learn, are actually created in such a way that one simply may not exist apart from the other. Indeed, as are we, spatially and temporally we are one. And though we know rather precisely how this gospel saga resolves itself, we’ve not the foggiest notion about the resolution of our own lives.
This “new” season of Advent returns from old each year again and again, reincarnating itself — quietly, gently, and, thank God, with few if any shopping malls dedicated to its cause. But it always recalls for me something in our human becoming, our maturing, something that is very similar to these notions about time and space.
The stories from our family history as a people of God ring changes on Advent’s two great biblical themes of possibility: Blessed Mary’s progeny and Blessed Baptiser John’s anxiety and the inevitable anger the other side of it. Advent gathers matter and spirit and points to their mysterious union, Word and flesh caught up in the star-crossed saving event of Christmas which sharpens the great themes of creation, judgment, and redemption into one.
What is created in the image of God is, as well, redeemed in the image of God, assuring us that finally, in a way very similar to what we’ve learned about God’s universe, never again need we — nor can we — separate the one from the other.