“Master, where dwellest thou?”
The Sunday Next Before Advent is a day of double prepositions. It signals at once an ending and a beginning in the Lesson from Jeremiah and in the Gospel from the end of the first Chapter from John. Yet, for centuries upon centuries, the Gospel read on this day was from “the Bread of Life discourse” near the beginning of Chapter Six of John’s Gospel. It is the story of the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness also read on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, albeit with a different point of emphasis, namely, the idea of God’s provisions for his people in the wilderness. As read for centuries on this Sunday, the emphasis is more on the idea of the fullness of redemption, the gathering up of all of the broken fragments of our lives into the life of God; hence the sense of ending. “Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.”
The change to the Gospel which you heard this morning was one of the few changes made in the 1962 Canadian revision to the Prayer Book. It suggests the Advent theme of God’s turning to us, the Advent pageant of God’s Word coming to us as light in the darkness of our hearts and our world. But that doesn’t entirely eclipse the idea of an ending in the sense of meaning and purpose which is found in our dwelling with God and God with us. Thus the readings are complementary and belong to the transitions from one form of spiritual emphasis to another that are inescapably interrelated; the themes of justifying righteousness and sanctifying righteousness that belong to our incorporation into the life of Christ and to the hope of heaven, our end in glory.
“Come and see,” Jesus says to the disciples of John and to us. Ultimately, it is an invitation to the banquet of divine love opened out to us through the pageant of God’s Word. Advent signals the coming of God’s word to us. The constant struggle of our lives is about learning to live in and from that Word. The task of the Church is simply to proclaim the Word of God faithfully and sacramentally. Today marks a kind of gathering or summing up of the past year of grace even as it catapults us into a new year; a time of endings and beginnings. “In my beginning is my end” and “in my end is my beginning” (T.S. Eliot, East Coker, Four Quartets).
God’s word coming to us is given as the principle of our abiding in the love of God. As George Herbert says, “the crosse taught all wood to resound his name” and that is very much signaled in the architecture wherein the wood of this Church resounds with the name of Christ so that his word may have its resonance in us.
What does this mean for us? It means that we are recalled to who we are in the sight of God. Last Sunday, we had the wonderful Gospel story of the double healing of the woman afflicted with an issue of blood twelve years and the raising of the ruler’s daughter. A scene within a scene, the woman was made whole, not simply by stealing a cure from Jesus unawares merely by touching “the hem of his garment,” but by “Jesus turn[ing] him[self] about” and looking at her face to face. Here in the Gospel reading from John, Jesus turns to face the disciples of John and to engage them in dialogue, face to face. “Jesus turned.”
The whole of our lives in faith is about God’s turning to us and speaking to us face to face. That is what our liturgy is about, week after week. God speaks to us face to face through his Word proclaimed and in his Sacraments celebrated. That, in turn, challenges us about the quality of his Word living in us. After all, the experiences of our lives are tinged and coloured by no end of struggle and hardship. Sorrow and joy are forever intermingled on earth. Yet, “it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason” (T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral). We participate in something more and greater, the grace of Christ which gives meaning and purpose to the experiences of our lives when they are placed in the turning of Christ to us and our turning to him.
The first direct speech by Jesus is a question, “What seek ye?” What do we want? It is the great Advent question which assumes that there is an ultimate truth to our desires, however incomplete; it is the desire for God. In the culture of the market–state, the market presumes to tell us what we want and need, and even the things to which we think we are entitled. But the things the consumer world offers do not and cannot satisfy the deep yearnings of our souls. Only God can satisfy our yearning for what is eternal and complete. It is found in God and in God’s turning to us.
The Gospel of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness also speaks to our yearnings especially in the face of all of the broken bits and pieces of our lives. In Christ there is the gathering up of all of the fragments of our lives into wholeness and completeness. The Lesson from Jeremiah signals the gathering of the scattered seed of Israel by and to “the Lord our Righteousness” out of the wilderness of the Exodus and out of the wilderness of the Babylonian exile, and, by extension, out of all of the wilderness experiences of our lives. The phrase “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” is in capital letters to emphasize the principle of God in his revelation to us.; the “I AM WHO I AM” is our righteousness, the one in whom we find wholeness and truth. In the Christian understanding, the gathering is found in Christ who turns to us and looks upon us with the eyes of compassion and speaks to us with the words of salvation and grace.
Yet it takes the stirring up of our wills to want what God wants for us. That is part and parcel of the special grace of this day. It calls us to look back upon the year past and, at the same time, to look ahead to the beginnings of a new year. The past year is, no doubt, tinged with sorrow for our sins and failings but also coloured with joy in the knowledge of God’s Word. Just so we may begin again in the joy of Christ’s Advent, knowing full well the sorrows and the joys his Advent brings, and knowing, too, that God wills that “nothing be lost” but all be gathered to him in his mercy and truth, however much our lives, our culture, and our churches may seem to be in ruins.
God’s Word of light and grace comes to us in the wilderness of our lives that we may abide or dwell with him. The desire for that abiding in the eternal life of God is expressed in the disciples’ question, “Master, where dwellest thou?” It is raised in response to Jesus’ question, “What seek ye?” It leads to Jesus’ wonderful invitation, the invitation that belongs to his advent, “Come and see.” What we learn in his turning to us and our turning to him is more than mere “fragments shored against the ruin of our lives” (T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land). It is nothing less than our being found with the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God, who is God with God and God with us. Only in attending to the motions of God’s Word coming to us do we begin again to learn to abide in his word of light and love. Such is the ultimate good for which we seek.
“Master, where dwellest thou”
Fr. David Curry
Sunday Next Before Advent, 2023