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O Come, O Come, Emmanuel we sing. It is Advent
and we long for the coming of God into our world. O Come, thou DaySpring; O come, thou Wisdom; O Come, thou Lord of Might; O Come, thou branch of Jesse’s stem; O Come, thou Key of David; O Come, Desire of nations, Come.
Come and ransom us, Come and teach us, Come and cheer us, Come and save us, Bid our sad divisions cease, and be yourself our King of Peace.
And into that lovely, ethereal prayer barges John the Baptist shouting at us about being a “brood of vipers.” Yelling that repentence/turning your life around/preparing the way, as he is doing, isn’t a spectator sport. All the Advent longings in the history of time are not enough. We are called to Prepare the Way.
And yet, when we hear about the Way of God from Isaiah: with wolf lying with the lamb, leopard with kid, calf and lion and cow and bear and child and asp together, we shake our heads. It will never happen, never in a million years. And that lets us off the hook. How are we supposed to prepare for an impossibility?
Not so fast, says Isaiah. How are you supposed to prepare? Maybe we have to stop being the rational, less than optimistic adults that we need to be most of the time in this world. Maybe Advent, and preparing for God’s coming, is about being led by a child—to have the eyes and the ears and the openness that we once had as children. For with God and with children, everything is possible.
Isn’t this what Isaiah imagines the Messiah will be like? “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.”
Last week we talked about finding peaceful words, and acting in just and peaceful ways. To prepare ourselves to live and work in this sometimes unpeaceful world—The Center for Courage and Renewal has come up with five “habits of the heart” (based on Parker Palmer’s book Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Build a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit. They are:
1) an understanding that we are all in this together
(whether we like it or not)
2) an appreciation of the value of otherness
(God choose to create in living color, not monochrome)
3) an ability to hold tension in life-giving ways
(learning that we don’t have to agree to work together)
4) a sense of personal voice and agency
(we are important and have influence)
5) a capacity to create community
(finding a safe space for all to gather)
Those sound like habits John the Baptist would applaud. Those sound like building blocks on preparing the highway for our Prince of Peace. I commend them to all of us. But since we are to come at this like children, it is time for a story. So gather round while I tell you an Advent story—a true story, about Della and the Ducklings.
Della and the Ducklings
Ronan and Emma live on a farm in Ireland. They raise sheep and chickens. They also have a cat named Della. One day, they decided they would like to have ducks on their farm. So they got some eggs and waited for them to hatch – like we are waiting during Advent.
After several days in a safe, warm place in the barn, Ronan went to go check to see if the baby ducks had hatched. He found broken eggshells but could not see the ducklings anywhere! He was surprised. Then he was worried. What if Della the cat found them and decided they were a snack for her to eat?
Ronan and Emma felt so bad for the ducklings and looked around everywhere for them. Suddenly, they saw Della the cat. She had something small, yellow and fuzzy in her mouth. Oh no! She was eating one of the ducklings! Just as Ronan was about to chase the cat, Emma stopped him.
It looked like Della was carrying the duckling in her mouth, not hurting it at all. They followed Della back to the barn where her baby kittens were sleeping. They counted the kittens: one, two, three, four, five, six…Wait a minute! Some of these kittens have fuzzy, yellow feathers. They’re not all kittens. Some are ducklings!
To their amazement, Ronan and Emma discovered that Della the cat had adopted the baby ducks and was taking care of them. She was even nursing them alongside her own kittens. Surprisingly, the ducklings were drinking Della’s milk. Ronan and Emma were so happy that the ducklings were safe. They were well cared for by their cat mother and grew up into beautiful white ducks.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
Come into our world.
Come into our lives.
That we might be like Della, or the Ducklings.
That we might be as filled with the knowledge,
and wisdom, and shalom of You,
just as the waters cover the sea.
Alleluia, Amen.
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