First Friday in Advent

Isaiah 29:17-24; Psalm 27:1-6,17-18; Matthew 9:27-31

(Don’t be surprised when your Bible doesn’t show Psalm 27 going this far.  The numbers in the Episcopal Prayer Book Psalter are very different.  If you are using an NRSV Bible, the verses are 1-4, 13-14.  And the translation is very different; all you Bible nerds out there, take a look!)

In today’s Gospel people receive their sight, and the psalm celebrates our ability to “see the goodness of God in the land of the living” - not in the afterlife, but right now.  The NRSV offers a statement: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”  The Episcopal translation offers a question: “What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the LORD” - but ends that question with an exclamation rather than a question mark.  Is it a question, or a way of expressing amazement?  Either one of those is different from the simple declaration, “I believe.”  There’s something for us to ponder in each case.

As a declaration, “I believe” carries power.  I stand for this possibility, no matter what today brings or fails to bring.  I live and act from that stand, that faithful expectation.  I need to do this when I am unsure, frustrated, or despairing.  I believe.

As a question, something else emerges.  What if I had not believed that I should see this goodness?  How would my life have been different?  What would I have missed?  What fruitful chances or risks would I have avoided?  What joys would I have missed?  What opportunities to stand for others, or for myself?  What depths of God’s grace would I have missed if I had not believed?

As an exclamation, we answer the question.  Wow!  I would have missed the chance to notice God acting in my life!  I would have hunkered down and waited for this mortal coil to vanish, biding my time until “the next life” rather than seeing the abundance around me!  Wow.

At times I have not believed, and my life reflected that.  Then I have come to believe, and my life changed.  And those changes in turn deepened my belief.  Wow.  Now, in the midst of social and political division and upheaval, in the midst of climate change, in the midst of continuing poverty and slavery, I believe that I will see the goodness of God.  Seeing is believing - and believing is seeing.

One last word.  Isaiah’s words today reference the healing of those without sight, but that’s not the only “miracle” promised.  He promises that “the tyrant shall be no more, and the scoffer shall cease to be; all those alert to do evil shall be cut off - those who . . . without grounds deny justice” (Isaiah 29:20-21).  As I read those words and long for that to be fulfilled, I wonder: when our eyes are opened, what do we see?  Perhaps many of us do not want open eyes, precisely because we then are faced with tyrants and evildoers.  But vision is not divisible.  If I refuse to see the evil, I am going to miss the goodness of God as well.  Vision can be costly, but it’s worth it.

Where do you see the goodness of God today?  What is the cost you pay for awareness?