Word to the Wise
Monday, December 6, 2010 - Monday in the Second Week of Advent [St. Nicholas]
[Isaiah 35:1-10 and Luke 5:17-26]Strengthen the hands that are feeble, make firm the knees that are weak, say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; then will the lame leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing! [Isaiah]<br /> "I say to you, rise, pick up your stretcher, and go home." He stood up immediately before them, picked up what he had been lying on, and went home, glorifying God. [Luke]
I cannot remember whose motto it was - I think it was a commercial item - but the words were: The future is now! In essence that is what Jesus was saying to the audience, which included "Pharisees and teachers of the law, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem..." One may be certain that these latter individuals would be familiar with the text from Isaiah in the first scripture of today! A paralyzed man got up in front of them, picked up his stretcher and walked away. Was he "leaping like a stag?" We don't know, but we do know he was "glorifying God!"
When it is said that Advent is a season of "promise and fulfillment," the meaning is not simply a future event but a past and, most especially, a present one! Isaiah's "future" is NOW, represented, to be sure, in the person of the baby in the manger in that crib set that may still be awaiting deliverance from the attic or closet! For those scribes and Pharisees, the NOW was represented in that paralytic who was no longer a paralytic! It might help to remember that in the chapter of the Gospel of Luke just before the one featured today, Jesus read from another passage in Isaiah to his hometown synagogue and told them, "Today this scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing!"
The people of Jesus' time had their problems and challenges and sorrows - e.g. the paralyzed man - just as we do. Grief has no season. Yet, in this time in our culture the pains and sorrows seem to be magnified in proportion to the "cheeriness" that every store displays. It can be difficult to see God's promise being fulfilled when the economic and emotional demands of the season beset us. Perhaps we could "look around" and see if there is a way we can make that promise NOW and "real" for someone else who may be finding it hard to see any promise being fulfilled anywhere? Perhaps we could be inspired to this by the simple lighting of the candles on the Advent Wreath or putting out the "crib set?" Can we "put skin on" God's promise in our own time and make Isaiah's poetic vision a present reality? AMEN
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