Our readings this week are filled with images which we’re made to find wondrous, occurrences and people who we’re encouraged to think of as extraordinary. In the deserts of Canaan: flowers spring into bloom. In seats of high power: the mighty are brought low. Jesus praises John the Baptist as the best to ever walk among humans, and yet: we’re told he’s nothing like those in Heaven. Desperate situations are reversed, and grandeur even beyond imagination is spoken of as real.
Much of what is detailed exists outside of current time. These things are written of with utter confidence and faith, but also are spoken of as coming, are in gestation and as yet unseen; nothing has come into fruition yet. We’re meant to be inspired. We're asked to believe in the awesome power of God, who alone can bring about such things, and also to know that behind the even the most obvious-seeming situations, there’s potential for great transformation.
Our readings, coming to us during Advent, are likely meant to spark multiple responses. They're evocative, and in layered ways.
On one level, there's the example of Jesus himself. The mild irony of Jesus speaking, in the Gospel, of John the Baptist as the greatest man ever born of a woman is, of course, that we are aware that the distinction more clearly belongs to Jesus (Matthew 11:11). Perhaps Jesus gives the honor to John because John is still merely born of humans, whereas Jesus’ own background is both human and divine; and yet the Incarnation still depends upon Jesus being born among human beings, and of a human mother. God is drawn out of humanity. All of our future hope is concentrated upon one moment, upon the subject of a humble birth in a nondescript place in the desert. The miracle, the wonder of that, cannot be underestimated. It’s greater still than phenomena like burning sands becoming pools, or dumb tongues bursting into joyous song (Isaiah 35:7, 6).
But more personally, readings like these prompt us to demand great things of ourselves. Along with the standard examples of reversals of vices and virtues and their standard costs and rewards—the proud scattered; the humble fed; the despairing sated—illustrations such as lame creatures suddenly leaping, and holy pathways being laid out leading to God on which no unfit feet will travel, lead us to wonder about the untapped resources within ourselves.
We are enjoined to be patient and to strengthen our hearts for the coming of the Lord (James 5:8). We are told that happiness comes to those who place their hope in God (Psalm 146:5). We are made to rejoice in the salvation offered through Heaven (Luke 1:47). Via all of this, we become like the desert crocuses of future Zion, which, Isaiah tells us, will bloom in abundance, and (an odd image) rejoice in joy and singing (Isaiah 35:2).
The attribution of such very human (non-floral) characteristics to inanimate living things suggests to us a hidden layer to the images: humanity behind them; the potential for miraculous human transformation. Behind the mundane is grandeur. Behind the façade of limited human capacities is the reality that our potential is limitless. Behind our everyday responsibilities is the enormous and divine task with which we are charged: to become as magnificent as sating streams in the desert, as gardens bursting into bloom on the arid sand. We’re meant to bring beauty into being, even where it seems unlikely to take root.
The Advent season usually comes across to most of us as an excellent opportunity to be on our best behavior. We shelve some of our vices or lazier inclinations, become extra-generous; we increase our donations to churches, or perhaps buy gifts for strangers.We're less reticent to make donations when they're asked of us. We resume correspondence with those who we otherwise rarely talk to, sending kind words and overdue hellos. We try a little harder.
These seem to us measured responses to the miracle of Christmas, somewhat adequate ways to express our gratitude for what God did for us through Christ. And acts of kindness are, indeed, great things. But prompted like this, having become so rooted in our annual routines, they fail to parallel the fantastic images we find in our readings. God loves our little kindnesses--they cannot be validly decried; but he also equips us for so much more.
As we delve further into Advent, and draw closer to commemorating that desert birth eons ago, we should explore the ways in which we might, ourselves, seek greater majesty beyond our regular deeds. We can adopt good behaviors which are temporarily outside of our ordinary processes; but what can we do that more nearly approaches miraculous? What can we seek in ourselves that doesn’t seem readily available or likely? What unimagined resources can we try to tap into, and what magical fruitions can be drawn forth? And how can we do this continuously, beyond the Christmas season?
We should always be mindful both of our unimagined and fantastic potential, and of the necessity of maintaining mindfulness always. A desert spring which bursts forth for a moment and then recedes wouldn’t be a miracle that makes the pages of prophecy; it would be a mere anomaly, a tease (Isaiah 35:2). Our deeds should be better than that. A John the Baptist who retreated from his wilderness ministries to a royal palace to don soft robes would not have found his name at home on the lips of Jesus; there’s no comfortable rest to reward us now for being 'good' on some days (Matthew 11:8). The Holy Way Isaiah speaks of is no occasional road (Isaiah 35:8). We aren’t promised easy; we aren’t told to awe over sometimes-behaviors.
Our readings this week ask us to look beyond. They also assure us that, if we do, we’ll encounter things unimagined, things which take our breath away—things that even wait to be discovered in ourselves.
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