Third Sunday Of Advent
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Theme For The Day
Advent is a time for seeking out, and discerning, the hints God leaves of good things yet to come.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 35:1-10
The Desert Shall Bloom
From time to time, those who dwell in desert lands are privileged to witness the return of water to their parched landscape. Suddenly, the rains come, the flash floods roar, the bone-dry wadis fill. Appearing in their wake are bright, desert blossoms and impossibly green plants. These flourish for an all-too-brief season before the land returns, again, to its dusty browns and grays. Such is the dramatic event depicted in chapter 35 of Isaiah, with the promise that "waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert" (35:6). Yet, there is a difference: This is no fleeting, seasonal phenomenon. This is the spectacular intervention of the Lord, and the changes the creator brings to the land are permanent. Verses 8-10 tell of a great, processional highway the Lord shall build, far more impressive the grandest avenue conveying pilgrims to the Babylonian ziggurats. Along this road shall march "the ransomed of the Lord" -- those joyous pilgrims, newly liberated from captivity. Their joy shall be "everlasting." Here, in the midst of the prophecy of Isaiah of Jerusalem, is a chapter that seems to belong more by style and content, to the work of Second Isaiah. Scholars have debated whether a later redactor, influenced by the later prophet, inserted this material into the earlier document -- or whether the influence worked the other way, and Second Isaiah was inspired by his predecessor. Whatever the case, this chapter bespeaks the close thematic unity of these two portions of the larger work, and the close relationship between the thinking of the two Isaiahs.
New Testament Lesson
James 5:7-10
Be Patient; Await The Lord's Coming
In the first, heady years after the resurrection, the Christian community expected their Lord's imminent return. By the time the letter of James was written, it had become apparent that they needed to reframe their expectations, for they were in for a long wait. James is writing to a suffering church: a people persecuted on many fronts, most notably by the wealthy and powerful. He has just finished condemning these oppressors in verses 1-6. The apostle's advice to his beleaguered flock is: patience. As the farmer awaits the rains that nurture the earth, so too they must await the coming of Christ (v. 7). The seeds have been planted. The climactic conditions are right. All that remains is for the natural processes to work themselves out.
The Gospel
Matthew 11:2-11
John The Baptist And Jesus
This passage contains two distinct pericopes, both having to do with John the Baptist. In the first (verses 2-6), the imprisoned John the Baptist sends emissaries to Jesus, asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" (v. 3). This is one of those passages that illustrates the pitfalls of trying to harmonize the different synoptic gospel accounts -- for if, as Luke indicates, John's mother Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42) -- and if the infant John "leaped in the womb" at his first encounter with Jesus -- it seems strange that the adult John would sound so clueless about his own cousin. Synoptic parallels aside, Matthew's own, earlier account of John's reluctance to baptize Jesus (3:14) suggests that John ought to know the answer to his own question already. Some commentators have struggled to explain why John would send his disciples on a wild goose chase when he could have answered the question himself. Yet, it is enough to say that Matthew's tradition knows nothing of the parallel nativity story of Elizabeth -- nor of a familial relationship between Jesus and John. Furthermore, even within this single gospel, it seems that Matthew is incorporating another tradition: by which John the Baptist is an early competitor to Jesus, who only in his last days comes to name him as his successor. Jesus' answer to John's emissaries is that his miraculous signs and the character of his preaching ought to speak for themselves. In the second pericope (verses 7-11), Matthew further defines the relationship between Jesus and John, this time by citing words of Jesus himself. Jesus commends John in the highest terms -- he is "more than a prophet," and even the greatest human being ever born -- but he also clearly subordinates Jesus to himself. Although there is more to the pericope than this, the lectionary selection concludes here, with Jesus pointing out that even the humblest citizen of God's eternal realm is greater than John. There is a contrast, in both these pericopes, between the world as we know it and the divine realm -- a suitable message for the Advent season, when alert Christians are continually jolted by the tension between this-worldly revelry and otherworldly joy.
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Luke 1:47-55
The Magnificat
Mary's famous hymn of praise -- called the Magnificat after the first word in the Latin translation -- is provided today as an alternate psalm. Some preachers may wish to use it as an alternate gospel lesson. This song quickly broadens beyond the theme of Mary's gratitude (verses 47-49), becoming a general hymn extolling God's greatness. It has close links to the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10). Mary's story, in Luke's retelling, parallels that of Hannah, who likewise receives news of the coming of a child blessed by the Lord. The Magnificat is a hymn of reversals -- the proud humiliated, the powerful brought down, the rich sent away empty. It expresses, in poetic form, a favorite Lukan theme: the vindication of the poor.
Preaching Possibilities
The preacher William Sloane Coffin has said that, in Jesus Christ, "God hits the world with the force of a hint."
Like many other prophets before and since, John the Baptist was seeking to read the signs of his times, to unravel the meaning behind God's hint. John looked around him and saw that the world was not a happy place. His people -- the chosen people of God (though they scarcely remembered it) -- were oppressed by the Romans. Tax collectors swindled widows and children for all they were worth. Roman soldiers were billeted in the towns -- their very presence an insult to the proud Jewish people. The king (if you could call him that) was a pampered oriental potentate, whose political instincts were simple: to follow the gold, always the gold.
"Prepare the way of the Lord!" screamed John -- his voice crying in the wilderness, after the manner of the prophets.
"Bear fruit worthy of repentance," he warned the pompous Pharisees -- for "even now the ax is laid at the foot of the plant."
"One... is coming after me," he predicted, whose "winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire!"
John looked around him, in other words, and saw that it was not good -- and so, he looked to God to break into history at that moment in time and set things right.
John is languishing in prison when he hears of the growing fame of Jesus of Nazareth. He sends some of his disciples over to investigate: to sidle up to Jesus, to talk with him, to see what stuff he's made of. "Are you the one who is to come," they ask, "or are we to wait for another?"
Jesus' reply is simple: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."
It's not the sort of answer John is looking for. John has spent his life anxiously scanning the horizon for a Messiah with the reins of a chariot in his hand a righteous general at the head of the armies of insurrection. The Messiah John is expecting will cast the Roman overlords from the land, free political prisoners from their cells, and re-establish true worship in the holy temple.
Jesus' claim to prophetic authority is of a very different order. He speaks not of judgment and destruction, but of health and peace, of light and love. "Go ask the ones who used to be blind, or lame, or leprous," he is saying, "Go ask the ones who once were deaf, or dead, or mired in poverty -- they know who I am!"
The sign of the Savior's coming is not the scorched earth of a vengeful army, as John imagines; no, it is -- in the poetic vision of Isaiah -- a fresh, green shoot sprouting forth from the stump of Jesse: new life from the old line of King David, that Judea had long since reckoned to be dried-up and dead. In Jesus Christ, God hits the world with the force of a hint -- a hint of new life for those hungry to hear good news.
Jesus, as we all know, was born in a stable, not a palace. Who could have predicted that the little boy playing in the wood shavings of Joseph's carpenter shop was God's own Son? Who indeed but Mary, his mother -- Mary, who talked with the angels? It was Mary who first sensed the force of God's hint.
That day in the temple at twelve years of age -- as he stood there astounding the learned scribes not only with his knowledge of the scriptures, but with his wisdom -- that was another hint of what God had in store.
When the grown man Jesus set off on his three-year ministry, he walked the dusty roads in battered sandals like anyone else and broke bread in the cheap inns and humble roadhouses of the common folk. Who would have dreamed the Messiah would come like that? "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" they asked in derision.
Then there came that day on the "high mountain apart," when Peter, James, and John gazed in wonder at their Lord and master. His clothes had become "dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." When the moment of Transfiguration was over, everything returned to normal -- except their vision and the memory of the force of God's hint.
Then there was the time a few of them walked with a stranger to Emmaus. As the stranger in their midst broke bread with them at supper, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him." When you're suddenly hit by the force of a hint, you know -- somehow, you just know.
God still speaks to us that way: in hints and whispers, in glimpses out of peripheral vision, in dreams and intuitions. The touch of the Lord's hand on this earth is exceedingly subtle; the call of God comes, most often, not with a trumpet's fanfare, but with a gentle beckoning: a call to come home.
Advent is a time for seeking out the hints God leaves for us. For all the glitzy commercialism we love to hate, Christmas is still the time of year that brings a bounce to the step and a twinkle to the eye, for even the most jaded cynics. This time of year is positively laden with hints of Christ's presence: if only we have eyes to see, ears to hear.
Christmas, quite simply, brings out the best in a great many people. Statistically speaking, we are more likely to give, more likely to attend worship, more likely to reach out to neighbors at Christmas than at any other time.
Sure, there's such a thing as commercialism. Sure, there are times when tempers fray, and people are nasty. Sure, there are plenty of profiteers, eager to pocket our hard-earned dollars: to siphon off some of that "peace on earth, goodwill... to them!" But these things aren't Christmas, are they? They have nothing to do with the force of God's hint or that vision of the babe in the manger.
People in our culture cast such heavy baggage on the Christmas holiday. We expect Christmas, somehow, to make us happy! That's what the hordes of frenzied shoppers in the malls are doing: They're trying to buy happiness. They labor under the illusion that just around the corner, just inside the next store, is the one thing they're looking for, the thing that will make their lives complete. They're not sure what it is, but they're convinced, somehow, that they'll know it when they see it.
The one thing that makes a human life complete is not a thing at all, but a person: The person born under a star in Bethlehem, long, long ago. It's not so good to spend these Advent days perpetually taking our spiritual pulse -- asking ourselves, "Are we having fun yet?" So many of this season's joys are quiet ones -- suggestions, hints -- of a greater glory yet to come!
Prayer For The Day
Amidst all the noise and the clamor,
Amidst the frenzy and the rush,
Amidst the bright lights that dazzle,
quiet our spirits, O Lord.
Quiet our inmost selves,
so we may be alert, ready, watching, waiting,
to discern the hints you give us,
hints of a new world waiting to be born, in Christ.
To Illustrate
The year was 1809. All of Europe was living in dread of the armies that threatened to sweep the continent: Napoleon Bonaparte was on the march.
In every city of Europe -- from the cafés and marketplaces of the common people, to the salons of the upper class -- they were talking of little else but marches, invasions, battles. Newspaper headlines screamed out with alarm the latest atrocities of the Emperor of the French.
Other things, however, were happening in the Year of Our Lord, 1809 -- besides the campaigns of Napoleon. Quieter things... subtler things...
In Shrewsbury, England, a medical doctor and his wife welcomed a baby into the world on the twelfth of February. It was a boy, and they named him Charles: Charles Darwin.
As a young man, Darwin would spend five years sailing the South Seas, then return home to write a book, The Origin of Species. That book would turn the scientific world upside-down. There is no one to this day who can study biology or geology, psychology or even religion, without reckoning with the world-changing theories of Charles Darwin. Yet on February 12, 1809, no one could imagine what sort of man this baby would become.
On that very same day, in a little backwoods cabin three miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky, another baby boy was born. His parents were dirt-poor subsistence farmers. They could neither read nor write. Yet their newborn baby boy, Abraham Lincoln, would grow up to become President of the United States -- not only that, but in the eyes of many, our greatest president.
The influence on the history of the world of those two babies, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- born, coincidentally, on the very same day in 1809 -- has been incalculable. Yet back then, it seemed -- to anyone in the know -- that Napoleon's campaigns were the pivotal events of history. The names of Darwin and Lincoln are household words nowadays; yet who among us can remember the name of even one of Napoleon's victories?
It's just like God to work through a baby, rather than a general. God deals in possibilities and trades in potentialities.
***
As an artist once told Bill Moyers of PBS: "If you know what you are looking for, you'll never see what you did not expect to find."
***
Year after year, the ancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, holy and year after year the world in some measure stoops to listen.
-- Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 61
***
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
-- Evelyn Underhill
***
The aim of Life is to Live, and to Live means to be Aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely, Aware.
-- Henry James
***
The master became a legend in his lifetime. It was said that God once sought his advice. "I want to play a game of hide-and-seek with humankind. I've asked my angels what the best place is to hide in. Some say the depths of the ocean. Others the top of the highest mountain. Others still the far side of the moon or a distant star. What do you suggest?"
Said the master, "Hide in the human heart. That's the last place they will think of!"
-- Anthony DeMello
***
Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name.
The theologian Rudolf Bultmann puts it this way: "There is within all of us a faint reminiscence of who we really are."
***
We of the modern time live much more in the attitude of interrogation than of exclamation. We so blur our world with question marks that we lose the sense of wonder and sometimes even of vision. It is refreshing to note how frequently the great spiritual teachers of the New Testament introduce their message with the word "behold!" They speak because they see and they want their hearers and their readers to see. Their "behold" is more than an interjection -- it has the force of an imperative, as though they would say: "Just see what I see. Open your eyes to the full meaning of what is before you," which is the method of all true teachers.
-- Rufus Jones in Rufus Jones: Essential Writings (Orbis, 2001)
Advent is a time for seeking out, and discerning, the hints God leaves of good things yet to come.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 35:1-10
The Desert Shall Bloom
From time to time, those who dwell in desert lands are privileged to witness the return of water to their parched landscape. Suddenly, the rains come, the flash floods roar, the bone-dry wadis fill. Appearing in their wake are bright, desert blossoms and impossibly green plants. These flourish for an all-too-brief season before the land returns, again, to its dusty browns and grays. Such is the dramatic event depicted in chapter 35 of Isaiah, with the promise that "waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert" (35:6). Yet, there is a difference: This is no fleeting, seasonal phenomenon. This is the spectacular intervention of the Lord, and the changes the creator brings to the land are permanent. Verses 8-10 tell of a great, processional highway the Lord shall build, far more impressive the grandest avenue conveying pilgrims to the Babylonian ziggurats. Along this road shall march "the ransomed of the Lord" -- those joyous pilgrims, newly liberated from captivity. Their joy shall be "everlasting." Here, in the midst of the prophecy of Isaiah of Jerusalem, is a chapter that seems to belong more by style and content, to the work of Second Isaiah. Scholars have debated whether a later redactor, influenced by the later prophet, inserted this material into the earlier document -- or whether the influence worked the other way, and Second Isaiah was inspired by his predecessor. Whatever the case, this chapter bespeaks the close thematic unity of these two portions of the larger work, and the close relationship between the thinking of the two Isaiahs.
New Testament Lesson
James 5:7-10
Be Patient; Await The Lord's Coming
In the first, heady years after the resurrection, the Christian community expected their Lord's imminent return. By the time the letter of James was written, it had become apparent that they needed to reframe their expectations, for they were in for a long wait. James is writing to a suffering church: a people persecuted on many fronts, most notably by the wealthy and powerful. He has just finished condemning these oppressors in verses 1-6. The apostle's advice to his beleaguered flock is: patience. As the farmer awaits the rains that nurture the earth, so too they must await the coming of Christ (v. 7). The seeds have been planted. The climactic conditions are right. All that remains is for the natural processes to work themselves out.
The Gospel
Matthew 11:2-11
John The Baptist And Jesus
This passage contains two distinct pericopes, both having to do with John the Baptist. In the first (verses 2-6), the imprisoned John the Baptist sends emissaries to Jesus, asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" (v. 3). This is one of those passages that illustrates the pitfalls of trying to harmonize the different synoptic gospel accounts -- for if, as Luke indicates, John's mother Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42) -- and if the infant John "leaped in the womb" at his first encounter with Jesus -- it seems strange that the adult John would sound so clueless about his own cousin. Synoptic parallels aside, Matthew's own, earlier account of John's reluctance to baptize Jesus (3:14) suggests that John ought to know the answer to his own question already. Some commentators have struggled to explain why John would send his disciples on a wild goose chase when he could have answered the question himself. Yet, it is enough to say that Matthew's tradition knows nothing of the parallel nativity story of Elizabeth -- nor of a familial relationship between Jesus and John. Furthermore, even within this single gospel, it seems that Matthew is incorporating another tradition: by which John the Baptist is an early competitor to Jesus, who only in his last days comes to name him as his successor. Jesus' answer to John's emissaries is that his miraculous signs and the character of his preaching ought to speak for themselves. In the second pericope (verses 7-11), Matthew further defines the relationship between Jesus and John, this time by citing words of Jesus himself. Jesus commends John in the highest terms -- he is "more than a prophet," and even the greatest human being ever born -- but he also clearly subordinates Jesus to himself. Although there is more to the pericope than this, the lectionary selection concludes here, with Jesus pointing out that even the humblest citizen of God's eternal realm is greater than John. There is a contrast, in both these pericopes, between the world as we know it and the divine realm -- a suitable message for the Advent season, when alert Christians are continually jolted by the tension between this-worldly revelry and otherworldly joy.
Alternate Gospel Lesson
Luke 1:47-55
The Magnificat
Mary's famous hymn of praise -- called the Magnificat after the first word in the Latin translation -- is provided today as an alternate psalm. Some preachers may wish to use it as an alternate gospel lesson. This song quickly broadens beyond the theme of Mary's gratitude (verses 47-49), becoming a general hymn extolling God's greatness. It has close links to the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10). Mary's story, in Luke's retelling, parallels that of Hannah, who likewise receives news of the coming of a child blessed by the Lord. The Magnificat is a hymn of reversals -- the proud humiliated, the powerful brought down, the rich sent away empty. It expresses, in poetic form, a favorite Lukan theme: the vindication of the poor.
Preaching Possibilities
The preacher William Sloane Coffin has said that, in Jesus Christ, "God hits the world with the force of a hint."
Like many other prophets before and since, John the Baptist was seeking to read the signs of his times, to unravel the meaning behind God's hint. John looked around him and saw that the world was not a happy place. His people -- the chosen people of God (though they scarcely remembered it) -- were oppressed by the Romans. Tax collectors swindled widows and children for all they were worth. Roman soldiers were billeted in the towns -- their very presence an insult to the proud Jewish people. The king (if you could call him that) was a pampered oriental potentate, whose political instincts were simple: to follow the gold, always the gold.
"Prepare the way of the Lord!" screamed John -- his voice crying in the wilderness, after the manner of the prophets.
"Bear fruit worthy of repentance," he warned the pompous Pharisees -- for "even now the ax is laid at the foot of the plant."
"One... is coming after me," he predicted, whose "winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire!"
John looked around him, in other words, and saw that it was not good -- and so, he looked to God to break into history at that moment in time and set things right.
John is languishing in prison when he hears of the growing fame of Jesus of Nazareth. He sends some of his disciples over to investigate: to sidle up to Jesus, to talk with him, to see what stuff he's made of. "Are you the one who is to come," they ask, "or are we to wait for another?"
Jesus' reply is simple: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."
It's not the sort of answer John is looking for. John has spent his life anxiously scanning the horizon for a Messiah with the reins of a chariot in his hand a righteous general at the head of the armies of insurrection. The Messiah John is expecting will cast the Roman overlords from the land, free political prisoners from their cells, and re-establish true worship in the holy temple.
Jesus' claim to prophetic authority is of a very different order. He speaks not of judgment and destruction, but of health and peace, of light and love. "Go ask the ones who used to be blind, or lame, or leprous," he is saying, "Go ask the ones who once were deaf, or dead, or mired in poverty -- they know who I am!"
The sign of the Savior's coming is not the scorched earth of a vengeful army, as John imagines; no, it is -- in the poetic vision of Isaiah -- a fresh, green shoot sprouting forth from the stump of Jesse: new life from the old line of King David, that Judea had long since reckoned to be dried-up and dead. In Jesus Christ, God hits the world with the force of a hint -- a hint of new life for those hungry to hear good news.
Jesus, as we all know, was born in a stable, not a palace. Who could have predicted that the little boy playing in the wood shavings of Joseph's carpenter shop was God's own Son? Who indeed but Mary, his mother -- Mary, who talked with the angels? It was Mary who first sensed the force of God's hint.
That day in the temple at twelve years of age -- as he stood there astounding the learned scribes not only with his knowledge of the scriptures, but with his wisdom -- that was another hint of what God had in store.
When the grown man Jesus set off on his three-year ministry, he walked the dusty roads in battered sandals like anyone else and broke bread in the cheap inns and humble roadhouses of the common folk. Who would have dreamed the Messiah would come like that? "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" they asked in derision.
Then there came that day on the "high mountain apart," when Peter, James, and John gazed in wonder at their Lord and master. His clothes had become "dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." When the moment of Transfiguration was over, everything returned to normal -- except their vision and the memory of the force of God's hint.
Then there was the time a few of them walked with a stranger to Emmaus. As the stranger in their midst broke bread with them at supper, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him." When you're suddenly hit by the force of a hint, you know -- somehow, you just know.
God still speaks to us that way: in hints and whispers, in glimpses out of peripheral vision, in dreams and intuitions. The touch of the Lord's hand on this earth is exceedingly subtle; the call of God comes, most often, not with a trumpet's fanfare, but with a gentle beckoning: a call to come home.
Advent is a time for seeking out the hints God leaves for us. For all the glitzy commercialism we love to hate, Christmas is still the time of year that brings a bounce to the step and a twinkle to the eye, for even the most jaded cynics. This time of year is positively laden with hints of Christ's presence: if only we have eyes to see, ears to hear.
Christmas, quite simply, brings out the best in a great many people. Statistically speaking, we are more likely to give, more likely to attend worship, more likely to reach out to neighbors at Christmas than at any other time.
Sure, there's such a thing as commercialism. Sure, there are times when tempers fray, and people are nasty. Sure, there are plenty of profiteers, eager to pocket our hard-earned dollars: to siphon off some of that "peace on earth, goodwill... to them!" But these things aren't Christmas, are they? They have nothing to do with the force of God's hint or that vision of the babe in the manger.
People in our culture cast such heavy baggage on the Christmas holiday. We expect Christmas, somehow, to make us happy! That's what the hordes of frenzied shoppers in the malls are doing: They're trying to buy happiness. They labor under the illusion that just around the corner, just inside the next store, is the one thing they're looking for, the thing that will make their lives complete. They're not sure what it is, but they're convinced, somehow, that they'll know it when they see it.
The one thing that makes a human life complete is not a thing at all, but a person: The person born under a star in Bethlehem, long, long ago. It's not so good to spend these Advent days perpetually taking our spiritual pulse -- asking ourselves, "Are we having fun yet?" So many of this season's joys are quiet ones -- suggestions, hints -- of a greater glory yet to come!
Prayer For The Day
Amidst all the noise and the clamor,
Amidst the frenzy and the rush,
Amidst the bright lights that dazzle,
quiet our spirits, O Lord.
Quiet our inmost selves,
so we may be alert, ready, watching, waiting,
to discern the hints you give us,
hints of a new world waiting to be born, in Christ.
To Illustrate
The year was 1809. All of Europe was living in dread of the armies that threatened to sweep the continent: Napoleon Bonaparte was on the march.
In every city of Europe -- from the cafés and marketplaces of the common people, to the salons of the upper class -- they were talking of little else but marches, invasions, battles. Newspaper headlines screamed out with alarm the latest atrocities of the Emperor of the French.
Other things, however, were happening in the Year of Our Lord, 1809 -- besides the campaigns of Napoleon. Quieter things... subtler things...
In Shrewsbury, England, a medical doctor and his wife welcomed a baby into the world on the twelfth of February. It was a boy, and they named him Charles: Charles Darwin.
As a young man, Darwin would spend five years sailing the South Seas, then return home to write a book, The Origin of Species. That book would turn the scientific world upside-down. There is no one to this day who can study biology or geology, psychology or even religion, without reckoning with the world-changing theories of Charles Darwin. Yet on February 12, 1809, no one could imagine what sort of man this baby would become.
On that very same day, in a little backwoods cabin three miles south of Hodgenville, Kentucky, another baby boy was born. His parents were dirt-poor subsistence farmers. They could neither read nor write. Yet their newborn baby boy, Abraham Lincoln, would grow up to become President of the United States -- not only that, but in the eyes of many, our greatest president.
The influence on the history of the world of those two babies, Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- born, coincidentally, on the very same day in 1809 -- has been incalculable. Yet back then, it seemed -- to anyone in the know -- that Napoleon's campaigns were the pivotal events of history. The names of Darwin and Lincoln are household words nowadays; yet who among us can remember the name of even one of Napoleon's victories?
It's just like God to work through a baby, rather than a general. God deals in possibilities and trades in potentialities.
***
As an artist once told Bill Moyers of PBS: "If you know what you are looking for, you'll never see what you did not expect to find."
***
Year after year, the ancient tale of what happened is told raw, preposterous, holy and year after year the world in some measure stoops to listen.
-- Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), p. 61
***
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
-- Evelyn Underhill
***
The aim of Life is to Live, and to Live means to be Aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely, Aware.
-- Henry James
***
The master became a legend in his lifetime. It was said that God once sought his advice. "I want to play a game of hide-and-seek with humankind. I've asked my angels what the best place is to hide in. Some say the depths of the ocean. Others the top of the highest mountain. Others still the far side of the moon or a distant star. What do you suggest?"
Said the master, "Hide in the human heart. That's the last place they will think of!"
-- Anthony DeMello
***
Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name.
The theologian Rudolf Bultmann puts it this way: "There is within all of us a faint reminiscence of who we really are."
***
We of the modern time live much more in the attitude of interrogation than of exclamation. We so blur our world with question marks that we lose the sense of wonder and sometimes even of vision. It is refreshing to note how frequently the great spiritual teachers of the New Testament introduce their message with the word "behold!" They speak because they see and they want their hearers and their readers to see. Their "behold" is more than an interjection -- it has the force of an imperative, as though they would say: "Just see what I see. Open your eyes to the full meaning of what is before you," which is the method of all true teachers.
-- Rufus Jones in Rufus Jones: Essential Writings (Orbis, 2001)
