God’s Promise Happens

Photo of The Rev. Joe Behen by The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant

Last week, my daughter Samantha shared with me a story that was recently circulating among her friends.  Apparently, a driver received a letter from the police department stating that he had run a red light, and was now being ticketed and fined forty dollars.  Along with the letter was a photograph of his car, showing his license plate, taken from one of those cameras posted at certain intersections.  The driver was indignant, and responded not by paying the fine but by sending a photograph of two twenty dollar bills.  Rather proud of himself, he shared his story with family and friends until about ten days had passed.  At that time he received another letter from the police department.  When he opened it, he found that all it contained was a photograph of a set of handcuffs.  The man quickly drove to the city hall and paid his fine.

This driver had to be met where he was in order to grasp the reality of his situation.  In this same sense, God desires to meet us where we are – not in some idealized place that we want to be but can’t seem to get to – but where we actually are.  And so it is that the promise that God has made to Israel since the beginning finds its fulfillment in a person, much like you and me.

Merriam Webster says of the word “incarnate” that it is the “actualizing” of something.  To incarnate is to give something form and substance.  Regarding a promise, then, its incarnation is its fulfillment.  In terms of the incarnation of God’s word then we might say that it simply means the happening of God’s promise.  That is the central message of Advent.  God’s promise happens.

In both Jeremiah and in Luke, God’s promise is not in question.  It is a given.  Justice does come, and God’s kingdom is very near.  And that is what we find ourselves confronted with in this season of Advent.  We know that God’s promise, God’s word, is very near to us.  While we cannot see it or feel it the way we would choose, we have to trust that it is very close to us.  Advent is the time when we hold those things in tension – God’s promise in the one hand, and in the other hand all of our life experience that so often feels contrary to God’s promise.

For example, all of us either have, or will experience the death of someone very dear.  It feels like a hole has been left right in your heart, an emptiness that seems as though it will never again be full.  At other times, it happens that we find ourselves longing for more meaningful relationships.  Most of us have people in our lives with which we share small talk.  And much of the time that’s all we want, or maybe all we have time or energy for.  But at other times we’ve all felt that emptiness that comes, when the deep longing and yearning for meaning in our lives fails to find someone to share it with, someone who will look us in the eye and say, “Yes.  I too have felt that.”  Our lives are full of these and many other such experiences of un-fulfillment.

But in the midst of the intensity of such experiences, we find ourselves confronted with God’s word.  Today’s readings remind us of the certainty of God’s promise.  It is not something that may or may not happen.  “The days are surely coming,” says Jeremiah of God word to us.  “The days are surely coming when I will fulfill the promise I made.” 

And yet, in a very real sense, we still live in this Advent world, one with both the promise of fulfillment, and the experience of un-fulfillment.  But we are not asked to pretend that this is no longer a reality for us.  Far from it.  Jesus is telling us not only, that God’s word is near despite the fact that it doesn’t seem so.  He is actually suggesting that when God’s presence seems like an utter impossibility, when the powers of this world - the powers of death, injustice, and forsakenness - seem finally to have won the day, that God is present there in a way that surpasses all imagination.  We are asked to look intentionally, and clearly at the disconnectedness and pain that are part of the human condition, and to see that this is precisely where God’s Word will be accomplished. 

This is one of the most prevalent and powerful aspects of the promise in all of Scripture.   The wandering Abraham and the barren Sarah become the parents of a nation.  Moses, the baby of a helpless Hebrew slave becomes the unlikely deliverer of God’s people.  Judah is effectively extinguished by the powerful Babylonian nation, and becomes the only civilization under such circumstances ever to retain its religious identity.  What is possible for God is then re-imagined, and Israel is against all odds, reborn. 

The gospel of Jesus then takes this reality to a whole new level.  What appears to be one man’s complete destruction and death becomes in God the greatest victory humanity will ever know.  The thing to remember, is that God’s Word is still at work in the world.  It is at work in the least likely of places, and it’s coming to be in our lives, begins from something so small and insignificant as to be unrecognizable.  But its power is unimaginable until it is upon us.

So when you hear and remember God’s promise, but see only brokenness and failure, look carefully and expectantly for God’s presence, and wait.   Those are the signs that God is close.  “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  Have a blessed Advent.  Wait with hope.  Endure with love, and know that God’s Word happens.