I find it so interesting that part of the process for ensuring that the beautiful poinsettia plant blooms at this time of year involves the plant being placed in darkness for several hours of each day for a set period of time.  This regiment of “light-deprivation” and placing the plant in a dark environment is actually what enables the plant to bloom.  Part of the ‘journey’ of blooming necessitates a process of darkness.

We are at the time of year where the daylight hours are lessening as we move toward the ‘shortest’ day of the year at the Winter Solstice where at the point of the least amount of daylight, suddenly the days begin to grow longer as the daylight hours increase again.  It’s all part of the process of our earth, sun and world.  This process seems to be saying something about everything, indeed about us as human persons as well.

In our Advent selection from the prophet Isaiah today (Is 35:1-10), we hear something of this ‘process’ of moving from what appears as dryness and darkness towards springs of abundance and light. And the description is not relegated solely to the features of the land in our world – deserts and marshes – but also to our very bodies as human beings…

Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
Say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
With divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
Then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.

Like the earth, our bodies themselves will be healed through the Divine process of Loving that is surging forth through the Isaiah reading.  The questions that we may have about why things happen to us, why there is suffering, why there is injustice in our world, are seemingly subordinated by this great Divine expression of Love pouring itself out in and as our God.  How do we take this?  What meaning does this hold for us? What is this great “return” that is pure gift, yet requiring us to participate…

It is for those with a journey to make,
and on it the redeemed will walk.
Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing

For whatever reason, and I don’t pretend to know why, darkness is part of our lives, brokenness is part of the human experience.  And the amazing thing is that our God does not so much offer to ‘resolve’ this condition of ours, but instead enters it at its deepest level.  Isn’t this part of what we call “incarnation?”  God entered the very creation and the most beloved creature itself – US – to fully participate in all of Life – its darkness and its light, its brokenness and its healing.  Indeed, we believe that God’s ‘entry’ into our world, which is really God’s world, enables us to deal with the world in a spirit beyond simply tolerance, but actually a loving embrace as one would hold the most precious child in wonder.

Luke recounts in today’s Gospel (Lk 5:17-26), the story of the paralytic who had to be “lowered” from the rooftop by others in order to “get to” Jesus.  This “lowering” is an important image in the life of Christ as we see it in the Gospels.  More often than not, it is the “lower” way, the humble path of emptying (kenosis), that Christ takes in order to engage people.  No wonder he was so astounded by the faithful determination of the paralytic and those carrying him to go so far as to climb the roof and then lower the man down in order to encounter Jesus.  Could Jesus’s response have been anything other than “As for you, your sins are forgiven?”  The sheer determination to be ‘healed’ seemed to touch him in a way that he simply stated the obvious.  Yet we, perhaps like the Pharisees, wonder about these ‘sins’ that are ‘forgiven.’

So, as the story goes, Jesus gives them a literal picture of what this means in life.  “Rise and walk!”  At this command, the paralytic man, we are told, “picked up what he had been lying on, and went home.”  For Jesus it’s perhaps a matter of 6 of one or a half-dozen of another!  The longing for authentic love expressed can be nothing other than healing and forgiveness. When we are touched by Love or when we find ourselves in the flow of God’s Love, we can “let go” of what it is that we have been “depending upon” other than God, what we have “been lying on” or relying upon and quite simply – go Home!

This going ‘home’ is acknowledging and receiving God in the everydayness of our lives in such a way that no matter the circumstances, we truly rely upon God.  And this does not mean that we trivialize or deny what is going on in our world and in our lives, but rather radicalizes the circumstances themselves by the renewed or transformed way that we can now move through the circumstances, embracing them even, and allowing the Love of God to flow into even the darkest and dryest of our experiences, trusting that there is no alone-ness that is real when we realize we are at Home in God with each other and with all the world!  It can do nothing but “heal” if we trust and receive it, which means to let it flow through us and out to others in our actions and intentions.

Could this be the “redeemed walk” that Isaiah speaks of for “those with a journey to make,” which really is speaking about all of us whether we realize it or not?  Is this the “home” that healing can bring us?  The paralyzing brokenness of our lives, sometimes quite literally in our physical bodies, can be healed – the roadways of our lives have a new clarity that doesn’t take away obstacles necessarily but empowers us to embrace the obstacles with a trusting resolve that can allow for the unanticipated ‘home’ of God to reveal itself!  This is perhaps one way of looking at the wonderment of this beautiful Advent season, where blooms grow in darkness only to be shared abundantly in the light of others.  When this engagement happens, we can share the experience of “Home” as those in the Gospel:

“…astonishment seized them all and they glorified God, and, struck with awe, they said,

                                                 ‘We have seen incredible things today.’”

Peace

Thomas