I could hear them from some distance away, even before I climbed the cold, brick steps that led to the lawn. I had thought it was going to be a celebration. I was expecting joy. Instead I was left with…longing.
I was expecting joy.
It was nearly Christmas after all. Loudly colored lights traced several of the doorways along either side of the main grounds. The statue of Homer on the other end of the lawn was wrapped warm in a seasonal scarf. The statue of Icarus, who always looked like he was about to take flight outside the library, was wearing red and white ear muffs and looked like he had traded his flight plans for ski poles.
It was December. Advent by a different calendar. As I did every evening, I was walking back to my dorm room in Charlottesville from Venable Elementary School where I worked in the after-school program. The job at the school provided me not only with much-needed date money but also with the chance to irresponsibly rediscover my love for dodge ball— a game I found to be much more fun when your nearest size rival is in the 4th grade.
I was walking home that Advent evening. It was cold and the stars looked like they were barely leaking through the night darkness.
We had that afternoon at the elementary school begun to sing Christmas songs with the children: ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Deck the Halls, Dradle, Dradle, Dradle.’ That sort of thing.
I was walking up the hill from town onto the main campus. As I approached one of the fountain’d courtyards at the foundation of the Rotunda, I could hear them, the low sounds of singing, perhaps, I assumed, something like ‘Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming, Come, O Come, Emmanuel, or In the Bleak Midwinter.’
Something that Mr. Jefferson would not have countenanced singing on the steps of his temple to knowledge and learning.
Maybe it was because of the bright, gaudy decorations that lined the lawn or maybe because it was December and cold and Advent or maybe because that afternoon I’d sung ‘Sleigh Ride’ with first graders but what I expected was a Christmas celebration. Joy.
But as I got closer and as I walked near the steps of the Rotunda, I could no longer tell. There were, on the marble porch of the Rotunda overlooking the surrounding grounds, maybe fifty people standing cold and bunched and holding candles- thin tapers with the paper sheath to catch the hot wax.
Among those gathered there, many were old but some were not. Some, in wrinkled khakis and orange fleece, were clearly students and others were obviously teachers. Some of them were my teachers.
Standing at the bottom of the steps, I could tell that the faith of more than half was identified by the skull-caps they wore on their heads. Most of them stood in a fan around two rabbis who wore blue and white prayer shawls draped over their shoulders.
And standing next to them were two priests with clerical collars. They and the rabbis held what I took to be bibles in their hands while others held placards, posters and flyers that, in the darkness, I couldn’t make out.
Again maybe it was because I was expecting a celebration or maybe it was because I was just curious, but I walked up the Rotunda stairs and when I got to the top someone handed me a candle and a flyer. Another turned and lit my candle. In the small light of the candle, I glanced down at the flyer in my hands.
And what I read there was not quite joy.
One of the rabbi’s sang, his voice aided only by his own sincerity. It sounded like a psalm. I could see his breath hit the cold air as he sang.
And as he sang, I looked down at the flyer I had been handed- it was one that I’d seen stapled into tack boards and telephone poles: ‘Memorial Vigil for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation’ it said.
And below the heading was a photograph of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Prime Minister of Israel and next to his photo were his dates, which told me it was a little over a year since he had been assassinated.
I had been expecting joy but in the candles’ glow I could see the tracks and lines of tears on half of the faces.
The rabbi’s song tapered off with a last, long mournful note and then a student- a girl with dark hair and Malcom X glasses- read from the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Isaiah.
When she was done, the other rabbi took a step inside the circle and explained that over a year before that Prime Minister Rabin had been killed by one of their own, by a fellow Jew. The rabbi then explained that even though the People of Israel have their home and their land and even though Jews in America live in peace and safety— the People of God can never be satisfied, he said.
The People of God can never be satisfied because God’s promises and our hopes are much too large. Until God brings his Kingdom to Earth— until that day— our joy will always be mixed with longing.
Some nodded their heads and others stamped their feet for warmth. And then everyone turned their shoulders to shift their focus, and Father Fogarty took a step towards the middle of the gathering. He had a candle in one hand and, in the other hand, an opened bible with a worn, brightly woven cover.
Father Fogarty was one of my professors. He was also a Jesuit priest.
If you can picture in your mind the stereotypical Irish priest, and add to that image a Christmas-red ESPN sweater over top his clerical collar, then you know what Father Fogarty looks like. He had a white shock of hair, a ruddy face and at all times of the year he had a smile like Santa.
Father Fogarty flashed his Santa smile and he thanked the rabbis for inviting him to participate. He stepped to the center of the gathering and he held up his candle a little as if to help him see the crowd better.
But Advent— it’s about more than God-with-us.’
For Christians, he said, this season is Advent. It’s a season of joy because we believe that in Mother Mary’s womb all the promises and presence of God take flesh.
‘Advent,’ he explained, ‘is also a season of longing, restlessness and waiting. For Christians,’ he said, ‘Jesus is God’s answer to prayers and hopes that have their seeds in the exile.
Prayers and hopes for God to send a King like no other, whose might might be matched only by his mercy, who will give the poor their due justice, who will fill the hungry and free the captives, end suffering and heal the nations.
‘Most people don’t want to talk about war or violence or hunger or poverty so close to Christmas,’ he said.
He then motioned with his candle towards the crowd.
‘But for those of you here who are Christian, he said with his Santa smile, it’s Advent. Advent is about counting down to Christmas. Advent is about counting down to Christ coming again. Advent is about restless longing.”
Six hundred years before Christmas, Nebuchadnezzar and the armies of Babylon had invaded Israel and left Jerusalem, the City of God, in a shambles. Both the land God had promised his people and God’s promise that God would abide with them forever- both promises lay in ruins.
The Temple, the tabernacle of God’s glory and presence, was reduced to an empty crater of rubble and broken-faith. The invaders looted Israel of her treasure and her people. God’s chosen people were displaced, carted off as slaves and detainees.
Those to whom had been given a land of milk and honey were scattered among refugee camps.
Those gathered in today’s scripture text for the Grand Opening of the Second Temple never thought they’d be there. For as long as a lifetime, they cried and prayed and screamed at the sky of the oppressor’s country.
They’d been convinced that God had abandoned them, that God was most decidedly not with them. They’d grown ashamed of their hopes in the faithfulness of God and they feared that their future was forever in hock to their past.
They never thought they’d be there.
But one day, Israel’s captors were taken captive by another and exiled Israel was set free.
And Zerubbabel, his name means ‘the seed of the exile,’ he’s the one who brings God’s people home.
When they finally arrive home, they survey the damage: roads must be cleared of debris, graffiti washed from walls, schools reopened, homes patched with plywood and plastic.
But everything waits… for the Temple to be rebuilt.
Everything is put on hold until the Temple, the visible sign of God’s presence, is put back together again stone by stone. For years, Zerubbabel stands at ground zero with worn, faded blueprints handed down from Moses. Everything is precise, everything measured according to the memory of the original.
When the day finally comes for the dedication, for the grand-opening, the Temple parking lot is alive with the bleating noise of 71 bulls, 15 rams, 105 lambs and 7 goats. For the offering.
The clergy dress in their finest vestments. The choir is robed. Ushers, dressed in their Sabbath best, pass out commemorative programs.
Silver trumpets and cymbals play just as they did when David brought the ark to Jerusalem. Music plays. A ribbon is cut. A congregational song breaks out: “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever…”
Shouts of celebration erupt and interrupt the singing. Bulletins fall to the ground as some cheer and others clap in time to the music.
Everything had waited for this day and now they were home and now they were free and now they were safe and now the Temple, the stone symbol of God’s presence with them, was restored.
It was a moment for nothing but joy.
But there in the congregation of the exiles, many were crying. Some were crying tears of joy, but others were just crying.
They had their home back, yes. They had their Temple back, true.
But those who cried that day, those who’d only recently been captives and slaves, hungry and oppressed- they remembered another, still outstanding promise from God, a promise that came with the First Temple:
The promise of a King like no other, a King who would establish God’s justice and God’s righteousness, who would judge the poor and the meek with equity and humble the proud, who would embody in the flesh God’s love for his people.
And so in the midst of such praise and celebration and joy, there were those who refused to be satisfied.
“I also would like to read from the prophet Isaiah,” Father Fogarty told the gathered crowd. And he held his candle up to his bible.
And he said that these were words that many knew only from Handel’s Messiah.
And he said that for those of us who were Christians, he wanted us to hear the familiar words not as an having met their fulfillment on Christmas, but as a prayer that God’s people have been praying since the exile.
He said he wanted us to hear it as a longing, like we would the Lord’s Prayer.
“For that reason, I will read it in the future tense:”
“The people who walk in darkness
will see a great light;
those who live in a land of deep darkness—
on them light will shine .
You will multiply the nation,
you will increase its joy;
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you will break.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority will rest upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority will grow continually,
and there will be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
The passion of the Lord of hosts will do this. “
“If that isn’t your prayer,” he said with his Santa smile, “then Christmas is just a birthday for someone you don’t know very well.”
