Fear and Foreboding – Advent 1

Darkness and deep shadows define the landscape of Advent,  falling over the human spirit. This is the beginning, every year, every year. Our ritual lights candles in the darkness, but we rush to look away from the darkness, losing sight of the element in which light shines.

The story of faith is harsher than we enact it.  According to Luke, Jesus warns his friends that . . . People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.

Fear and foreboding have fallen over our world in these past weeks and months. Syrian refugees, in staggering numbers and ceaseless lines, cast uneasy shadows over many nations, and are a foreboding about the order of things. The nightmare of Paris happened on a November evening, in the gathering dark. The violent raid in Brussels followed in the dark hours of an early morning.

We who are watching are terrified. Wailing has arisen among politicians, giving voice to our fears, our national desire to keep darkness at bay, to keep violence away from us.  And many rise to offer us false hope, the false assurance that we can keep ourselves safe if we keep certain evil people away.

Our fear flits from one group of people to another:  a month ago it was Mexicans; then Syrian refugees; now our fear is settling on Moslems, as we frantically try to name the Evil Ones, the Ungodly, the Agents of Death.

Some ask us to think about what we are doing, to think about the desperate and the innocent – widows, orphans, children under  5, starving and hungry people. And some shout No to all immigrants, while others begin to try to sort: the dangerous from the safe; the genuine from the imposters; the Christians from the rest.

What we think we need to do keeps changing, and as well, how we think we should do it. Two months ago a wall was the answer, and many European countries began to put up fences and plan walls. That was before Paris, when we realized walls cannot protect us. Now the talk is of lists, registration programs, long waiting periods, sign-offs by many agencies.

Yet we have it in faith that God will come among us, to be our Peace and to be With Us, only from within deep darkness, from within terrors such as these.

Jesus continues his warning: Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with . . . the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.

When you see these things taking place,Jesus says, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Then he points to the fig tree, which puts forth buds when the earth is still bare, fruitless, dry.  The fig tree is a faithful harbinger of the end of the dark time, and the opening of a fruitful time.

Be part of the fruitful time, not part of the terror, Jesus is saying. Be a fig tree, stand in the darkness and begin to blossom, do not join the world in its fear and foreboding, but let your faith in God’s coming shine in you. Let your light shine.

T. S Eliot, recognizing our unwillingness to face the darkness, or to disbelieve it, wrote, in Murder in the Cathedral:
We acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
as men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God,
the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted . . . .
we fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch,
the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal. . . .
Lord, have mercy upon us.

Advent is filled with dark tales: risky and dangerous journeys, fear in Mary’s heart, anguish in Joseph’s mind, the Unwelcome Mother giving birth in a barn, shepherds stumbling through the Bethlehem night, rumors from strangers that alarm Herod and ignite his rage, the Refugee Babe and his parents in flight, footsteps ahead of slaughter.

May we not lose sight of our own refugee status in this world, as children of God.  May we not put our trust in walls, or in lists, as Caesar did, instead may we  put our faith in the Presence, who grants us respite from Fear. Meister Eckart, the medieval German mystic, wrote: God is always waiting to be born. May we not spend this Advent working to keep the Holy Child from entering into our world.

The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.
– Sylvia Plath, in Black Rook in Rainy Weather

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Illustrations:
1.  The Rook, by Susan Smith, image on Broughtonspurtle.org.uk, birder blog.
2. Rooks, photo taken in Serbia by Dusan Petrovic via Birdshare, image on Cornell-Ornithology  bird guide site.
3.  Sycamore Fig Tree, image from Wikipedia Ficus page.
4.  Advent Candle Lighting, St. John XXIII Church newsletter.