Advent 1

Back in early May, Lillian Yu-Feng Hsu, 87, died in an assisted-living facility in White Plains, New York. Han Chinese, she lived through WWII in China when she was a kid, but later studied medicine in Taiwan. Her next step was a major move to the United States to complete a medical internship. “I knew I had to become educated so I could be totally independent,” she would say later in her memoirs.

In time, she became not only a doctor, but a geneticist in New York for many years. Her research was published in such journals as the American Journal of Medical Genetics and The Journal of Pediatrics. She set up the first lab in New York City that performed amniocentesis, setting the international standard for prenatal diagnostic testing.

When she died, none of her family members could be with her. They were able to chat with her via Zoom for a two-week period before she passed, thanks to the help of nurses and aides. At her burial, only 10 people were allowed, and they had to maintain “social distance.”

One of her children, Carol Willison, was unable to join other family members to grieve and share. She was in Shanghai, the city of her mother’s birth. Carol teaches in the elementary school of a prominent international school there. Carol was not with her mother before she died, and she was not at her mother’s funeral, although she desperately wanted to be. She might have been able to leave Shanghai to be with her mother and attend her funeral, but she would not have been able to return to Shanghai, since at that time China had barred entry to foreigners.

She was stuck. Separated from her dying mother if she stays; separated from her husband if she goes, and risking the loss of her teaching position as well.

Carol’s experience was not unlike thousands during this pandemic.

And we are stuck, too, under various restrictions.  We miss loved ones we are unable to see in person. Sure, we can Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, or Google Meet, but we miss touching a face, hugging, laughing and crying together. We lost something and we want it back. We want a return, a restoration of relationships — for things to be like they used to be.

This is the emotional, psychological and spiritual context of today’s lesson from Isaiah. The glory of Israel had long faded. Hundreds of years earlier, the northern kingdom had disappeared. And now, the memory of life in Judea and temple worship was a faint memory. Carried into captivity, the ancient Hebrews have been exiles in a foreign land.

Their recent history when still in their homeland had been scandalous.

They neglected religious observance. They lived in open rebellion against God. Their rulers had set up false idols and corruption. They disregarded the poor. They refused to listen to the prophets.

So, it was a long time since they had experienced prosperity or enjoyed blessings from the hand of God. In fact, God for years now had seemed far away, as though God had abandoned them: “You have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity” (v. 7b).

In captivity, in a strange land, the Hebrews now recalled the glory of their past. They remembered now how God had intervened on their behalf. They longed to know and experience the presence of God. And so the prophet opens today’s reading with the anguished words: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

Had these Hebrews forgotten that God loves to visit? God is a visiting God. The Bible begins with the Creator God not only bringing creation into being, but visiting our first parents in the Garden of Eden. In fact, according to Genesis 3, the Lord God came walking into the neighborhood where Adam and Eve lived: “The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (v. 9).

That is the question, isn’t it? Where exactly are we? God wants to visit us, so what are we doing? The southern kingdom of Judah clearly was not paying attention to God. They had other things to do than worship the Lord God.

And yet God loves to visit us. God visited Abraham in the guise of angels who sat down for a meal. God visited Jacob, wrestling with him in the night. God visited Moses in the burning bush and on Mount Sinai. God’s presence went with the Israelites through the wilderness in the form of fire and cloud. God visited Samuel as a boy, calling him in his sleeping hours. God visited Elijah in a still small voice.

Now, the prophet cries, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” The prophet knows that it is in God’s nature to visit us. “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down” (v. 3). The prophet says, in effect, “Hey, you used to visit us a lot. What gives? Why aren’t you coming around anymore? Please come for a visit — soon!”

Yes, it is in God’s nature to visit. And this is still true. Want a visit from God? Well, God is willing and eager to visit, and even to stay a while.

Isaiah feels as though they’re in some sort of quarantine. They must be infected, or something. There’s some reason God is staying away. Knowing that God is a just God, he suspects that something is wrong: “You meet those who gladly do right,” he says. (v. 5). He also knows that God works for those who “wait for him” (v. 4, echoing Lamentations 3:25).

Recognizing that it has been a long time since they’ve had a visit from their “Father” (v. 8), he complains that God has left them, committing his own people to an unwelcome quarantine. No visits from God. No meals left at the door. No face to face encounters. No Zoom. No nothing.

They have infected the relationship with their sin and idolatry. Now “you hid yourself” (v. 5c). Now, even though they attempt “to take hold of you … you have hidden your face from us” (v. 7).

This is the first Sunday of Advent. We know there’s going to be a reopening. We know God is coming for a visit!

What kind of visit will it be? How will we receive him? How do we receive him now? We are still a people in a strange land — exiles as it were. We long for our heavenly home. We, too, would like a visit. Yet, this is precisely the promise of Christmas: Immanuel! God with us.

God is with us throughout shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders. God is with us throughout quarantine. God is with us throughout social distancing — God is going to come close.

God comes to us not where we should have been if we had made all the right choices in life; not where we could have been if we had taken every opportunity that God has offered us; not where we wish we were if we didn’t have to be in the place where we find ourselves; not where we think we are because our minds are out of sync with our hearts; not where other people think we are or think we ought to be when they are attending to their own agendas. God meets us where we really are.

Carol Willison mourns the passing of her mother, Lillian, and yet at the same time, she only recently welcomed into the world her first grandchild, a boy. In a sense, Lillian continues to live now, through her great-grandson. There’s a baby in the family now, and babies are such miracles of wonder and awe. There is no visitation quite like the arrival of a baby.

And that’s what we are preparing to celebrate – the arrival of a baby.  God himself, in the person of a child, came to us in the flesh. So, this Advent, get ready, because the Almighty is dropping in for a visit.