Advent 17

The Third Wednesday of Advent, December 17, 2008

Isaiah 9:8-17 

This people’s guides have led them astray; those who should have been guided are in confusion.  Therefore the Lord showed no mercy to their young men, no tenderness to their orphans and widows; all were godless and evildoers, every one speaking profanity. 

I just finished reading a book of luminous beauty, about a couple and their son.  Evidence of Things Unseen appears to be a love story—and it is—but it is also a gentle commentary about the building of the atomic bomb, about the bomb’s effects.  The language is lyrical, the characters vibrant and delightfully flawed. 

The main characters, at the end of the story, work at Oak Ridge, the Tennessee site where atomic research was conducted.  There is a wonderful esprit de corps, a zest for the important work being done to help the war effort.  Motivation is high because the calling is a high one:  End the war.  All the people at Oak Ridge are good people.  They do not know that what they are working on is the most destructive force known to mankind, that it will cause untold destruction and injury to civilians in Japan. 

Evidence of Things Unseen is also a parable for us.  We are good people.  We work joyfully for a worthy cause.  We want to help.  But often we don’t look beyond our narrow realm to see how we are connected to others, how everything we do affects the entire world.  Yes, the entire world.  We are a culture primarily focused on the individual, and sometimes we forget what so-called primitive people know, that the breeze from a butterfly’s wings causes the hurricane, that all things are connected, part of a unified Creation. 

Let us, this third Wednesday of Advent, throw ourselves in the break between the first and second sentences of the verses above, with a confession. 

We are a people ready to follow our leaders.           

     Lord, You be our leader.

We often stumble off the path of righteousness.           

     Lord, show us the way.

And the Truth, and the Life.  

Amen.