Wait for the Lord (Advent 3A)

Our weather around the province during the past few years is something of a joke. We go from floods to droughts without much in between. It even seems to be inspiring jokes. 

Just this week: Q: What does daylight saving time mean in Vancouver? A: An extra hour of rain.

The weather is one of those things that we don’t think much about unless it’s extreme, but it touches every aspect of our lives. No wonder there are so many phrases and expressions revolving around it.

You can be under the weather. Or have a fair-weather friend. Sometimes, you have to keep a weather eye open. Other days, you just have to weather the storm.

It’s not surprising that weather appears often in the Scriptures. Psalm 148 says “Praise the Lord from the earth… Fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!”

Isaiah 29 says “You will be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest…”, while elsewhere the book promises that we “shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”

 Jesus himself uses the weather as an image when he says “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”

And we see him rebuking the winds and the waves, and he tells us that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

 Those words, by the way, inspired a Sister I know to write a very cute bit of rhyming theology. Her poem went “The rain it raineth, everyday, upon the just and unjust fella. But more upon the just—because… the unjust’s got the just’s umbrella.”

We could spend a lot of time reflecting on weather in the Bible, but let’s just focus on weather in today’s readings.

The background to the first reading is a drought—something we experienced not very long ago, as we watched lawns and even trees turn brown. Few things in the ancient world were more devastating. No water, no crops. No crops, no food or money. Animals, a rare form of capital for some, would die of dehydration.

Against that dry desert background, these words from Isaiah are all but ecstatic. What joy when the flowers appear! The prophet spends hardly a moment on this wonderful event before telling us he’s really thinking about something even more important than water—the coming of the Lord, the avenger, the just One. Salvation. Healing. An end to sorrow.

The dryness of the desert was just a metaphor. We’re talking about the dryness of our souls, parched by sin, hardship, fear, and discouragement.

Whether we are oppressed, hungry, prisoners, blind, bowed down, lonely, widowed or orphaned—today’s Psalm mentions all the major misfortunes of life—we are called to hope in the Lord who brings justice, food, freedom, sight, and protection from despair.

But in the concrete circumstances of each of our lives, how do we gain access to the liberation and encouragement of the Lord who loves us and keeps faith forever? After all, who hasn’t experienced unanswered prayer or unrelieved distress?

The second reading answers the question in a very practical way: “Be patient, brothers and sisters.”

Be patient like the heroic farmers of old and of today, who wait for rain or who endure floods without giving up. Wait for what’s coming—wait in hope for the weather to change. In our age of instant gratification, when we’re annoyed if it takes two seconds for a webpage to load, this is crucial advice. God is not a computer.

It's not good theology, of course, but I once said that God has only one fault: He has no sense of timing.

But he does—his timing is as perfect as he is. Just as nature cannot be hurried by farmers anxious for their harvest, neither can God be hurried by our expectations of instant answers to our prayers.

Which doesn’t mean we do nothing in times of trial. The apostle James, one of the most practical writers in the Bible, tells us what to do as we wait: “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

This, of course, is my one-sentence summary of today’s homily:  “Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.”

How? By prayer. By actions like planning to attend the Tuesday Advent Masses and adoration. By going to confession. By some time reading the Word of God—ideally reading one or all of the Sunday Mass readings on line or from your missal. By attending Water in the Desert next Saturday evening—that especially can be the experience of joy Isaiah so beautifully describes in the first reading.

A final point. I was at Mass earlier today with the Archbishop and our permanent diaconate community. Archbishop Miller stressed that the “coming of the Lord” that is near is not Christmas but the second coming. We’re not trying to strengthen our hearts just so we have a better celebration on December 25.

We are not patiently waiting for Christmas like children eager for the arrival of Santa—not even the arrival of the Christ Child in the crib.

We are waiting for the second coming of the Son of Man, who will come to judge the living and dead. For that we must wait patiently, but like any good farmer do the best to yield a crop of holiness in hope.