Who is this?

Advent Reflections, 2007

Monday, December 3 – Scripture Readings:

Psalms 1, 2, 3; Amos 2:6-16; 2 Peter 1:1-11; Matthew 21:1-11

In the psalms I am encouraged to follow the law of God, to serve God with fear and trembling, to take refuge in God, and to cry to God for deliverance. Amos makes me afraid of this God who is promising to “crush Israel as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.” In 2 Peter I am invited to participate in the divine nature, to strive toward godly qualities, and to be effective in my faith in order to be welcomed into the eternal kingdom of Christ. And in Matthew I see Jesus come into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey as the people cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” That passage ends with these words:

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’ The crowds answered, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.’

What am I to make of all these messages?

Serve God. Take refuge in God. Cry to God for deliverance. Be ready for God’s wrath. Don’t be ineffective or unproductive in my faith. Be eager to make my calling and election sure. It’s enough to make me at least confused and at most just dropping it all and walking away…if not running, screaming into the night. How to remain in the place of advent, desiring God-with-us, Emmanuel when it’s all so confusing?

I’m not alone in my confusion – and that’s what brings me comfort.

…the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’ (Matthew 21: 10) How great that they asked even way back then when God-with-us, Emmanuel was right in their midst, walking their streets, riding their colts!

Even now, thousands of years after the prophets spoke of God’s wrath against those who had forgotten, thousands of years after Jesus’ birth and that celebratory entrance into Jerusalem, thousands of years after Peter strove to help us understand not only this Jesus but what it meant to follow him – we still ask, ‘Who is this?’

Maybe that’s part of what Advent means: I can still ask, ‘Who are you?’ I don’t have to have all the answers for God-with-us, Emmanuel to come again and dwell in the midst of my questions, my realities, my failings, my celebrations, my (oft’ feeble) attempts to follow well. Maybe Advent rekindles my anticipation, desire, and hope exactly because I don’t know exactly what I’m hoping for. It’s in the asking the question, in wondering about its answer, in waiting for resolution and fulfillment that I truly hope.

Rainer Maria Rilke is far more eloquent that me:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

Maybe Advent is looking forward to that some distant day when I find myself experiencing the answer. For now, in the present, I need to live this question…and the plethora of others that pervade my life. I can do not other. My hunch is that the answer to them all will be found in the same place, the same person…just not quite yet. That’s Advent.

Who is this?

This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.

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