Advent is supposed to be about waiting, but I think that turns out to be a terrible word to describe what it is we’re supposed to feel like as Christmas approaches. Think about what could possibly be more discouraging and pointless than a waiting room, the uncomfortable silence that we have to somehow drown out with TV or some phone time, the frustration about why whatever it is is taking so long, killing time reviewing in our mind the other more important things we have to do. To us, that’s waiting.
But today with just a few days left before Christmas let’s redefine just for a minute what waiting looks like and what it feels like. The best image of Advent waiting I’ve ever heard comes from a great theologian who said that the image we should have is not a waiting room or a long line, or sitting in a deserted room with the clock ticking, but coal miners who have been trapped in a cave-in. They’re waiting, of course, they have no choice, but no one else ever could be listening as intently, waiting to hear a distant tapping noise of someone trying to find them, waiting to hear a far-away voice that might or might not even be a voice, but as soon as they hear the slightest noise, they’re going to be shouting, “Over here, over here,” because they know that literally, hearing or not hearing is a matter of life and death.
We’re not trapped like coal miners, of course, so maybe you’ll think this is too extreme an image and it won’t resonate with you. But we are all like these coal miners in one sense, which is that whether we know it or not, whether we believe it is possible or not, we all are waiting to be set free from something, we are waiting to be moved on in life to something that is deeper and better than what we have. And no matter what we feel about how distant God can seem, it turns out that God is the one who is constantly chipping away, trying to break down our resistance, to break through, and it is God who is waiting for us finally to hear the noise and say, over here, over here, I need you, I’m ready, I want what you are trying to give me.
The first reading about King David, and the second about the angel speaking to Mary, are both here to tell us what Advent is really about — God interacting with us, pursuing us, speaking to us, and pulling us forward, not just these saints, David the King and Mary, but us. Whether it is a spectacular angel or the voice of someone right next to us, it’s not the voice that’s absent from our lives but our willingness to hear it, our attention, our listening, those are what is so often missing.
The noise of God chipping away isn’t always recognizable unless we are in that mode of the coal miner who is listening for anything, and wondering if that could be the noise that matters. Maybe a visitor, even an annoying one, maybe that is it, someone here to represent something that we have forgotten; maybe a message that we get from someone who needs help that we’re not eager to give, maybe even a sense of emptiness as the holidays get closer is a message to us of what is missing and what we need, or a nagging sense of injustice in the world that is eating away at us, they could all be how God is trying to pull us out, pull us forward, pull us out of our anger or our selfishness or our sorrow or whatever is holding us back.
But here’s a warning. Unlike so many stories around Christmas we can’t sentimentalize what might happen to us as a result of that interaction with God. Transformations like ones we are offered aren’t always so easy and heartwarming, and maybe that is why we don’t listen so closely for them. The reading about the annunciation to Mary is about a life interrupted and changed, and turned upside down, not a life always made easier. The transformation that Mary began in this gospel did not bring her safety and prosperity. Instead it brought her a life of complete unselfishness and a life of intimacy with God, this God who pursued her and chose her and spoke to her the same way God is after us. Hearing God involves giving up control of the conversation, it’s being willing to let God say what needs to be said and to let God ask us for something.
It’s hard to listen, and hard to recognize the voice we are waiting for. It means taking some moments on a cold winter night to hear the distant message, or maybe the not-so-distant message of the angel. But as Mary heard today with God nothing is impossible, even getting through to us in these days before Christmas, people like us with so many distractions, but with a clear voice reaching out to us that we need to hear.