Roy A. McAlpine
December 6, 2009
The Second Sunday of Advent
Year C

Baruch 5:1-9
The Song of Zechariah - Luke 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

In the words of today’s collect...May we prepare the way for our salvation and greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer…  Amen.

A friend of mine, a colleague in hospital chaplaincy, told me the following experience he had had.  He was asked to visit a patient who was having a rough time:  she was under 40 and had inoperable, terminal cancer.  A single parent, she was raising three sons, one of whom was now in college.  She needed personal support to meet the challenge of her overwhelming circumstances.  Knowing this, he went in to her room, and found her curled up on her bed, weeping silently.  He introduced himself, and said, “May I take your hand?  May I just sit here with you?  You don’t have to say a thing.”  The tears came down her cheeks, and the silence didn’t last long.  She started to talk and the words came tumbling out, articulate, questioning….  My friend said it sounded like a long lament and he found himself absorbed in her words, her tears, and her pain.  What could he say?  Her pain and sorrow and questioning were real.  He sat there in silence, holding her hand.  Then they talked a little about her sons, with her showing him pictures; and finally she asked him to pray for her.  He prayed with her and left her room.  The next day, he told me, he saw the woman with an attendant in a large recreation room.  As he came up to her, she smiled a bright – and very beautiful – smile at him.  She seemed like a different person – relaxed and happy.  They spoke for a short while and he left, promising to visit again.  My friend told me the story as a way of reflecting on it himself, with someone who would just listen.

What I heard in the story was that my friend offered his presence to the patient.  He didn’t just visit, but he listened with absorption; he was with her in his heart.  He didn’t “do” anything for her, nor did he ask anything of her other than permission to be with her.  What my colleague offered was what hospital chaplains strive to offer – themselves.   

Now we are in the time of preparation for the mystery of the Incarnation, that central event in Christianity when God moved away from Glory, took flesh and became human.  This is a mystery nearly impossible to believe:  it is now and it was even 2,000 years ago.  Not a mystery in the Agatha Christie sense, but a mystery in that it seems to collide with our common knowledge and expectations about life.  A mystery causes us to wonder, and, if we stay with that wondering, leads us on to a deeper understanding … about the nature of God.