Christ meets us in our offering – Isa 63:16b-17, 19; 64:2-7; Advent I collect

Advent I, Year B; Holy Infant church

Our readings today began without could have been understood as a formulaic profession of faith, “You, God, are our Father.” But it’s not just a statement of fact. Actually, in the Hebrew that verb “are” isn’t there, the reading would just begin with a list of titles for God: “You… God… our Father! Redeemer! (so named for ever)… Why do you make us stray from you, God?” It’s a long introduction to a question, a long crying out to God, to God whose absence is felt very keenly.

The reading probably comes from just after the end of the exile, when the people have come back from their captivity in Babylon and have discovered that the task of rebuilding life in Jerusalem would be really really hard. They had felt so far from God in exile, and had kept alive that hope that God would bring them home, but were discovering that just being back in the Holy City wasn’t enough. They still didn’t have the closeness to God they longed for. I imagine this lament, tearful, being prayed in the ruins the Temple, still not yet rebuilt. The plea continues: “Return.” Come back to us. The exile lasted about a lifetime. The people who returned knew of what life was like in their own land with their own Temple and their own king in his palace from stories their grandparents had told them. “Come back to us, make it how it once was.”

The people expand on that call to return, making it vivid: “Rend the heavens” – break a whole in the sky – “and come down!” Be God with us, be with us. And then they pray: “Would that you would meet us doing right!” It’s the same prayer for God to come and be with us, but expanded again. For not just any meeting with God is desired, but a meeting in which God delights in being with us. It’s the child who’s desperate for their parents to be at their recital or game. Be with us, and see us doing good! But, it’s not a boast, for the very next line confesses, “We are sinful.” It’s not a boast, it’s a prayer. It’s a prayer not just for God to come but for us to be ready for God to come. For God to delight in us. That we would be delightful. It’s a prayer that cries out for God’s presence, and is very hopeful about human capacity to delight God, and totally realistic about the ways we cause Him sorrow over us.

And it’s a prayer, an emotional prayer, not a theological treatise, but I wonder if some of the reasoning behind that request is contained a little later on, when the people confess, “You are the potter, we are the clay.” An artist is known in her art. We know God in each other. And if we want unity with God, if we want closeness with Him, we serve one another. “Come, meet us doing right!” We do meet God, when we treat one another with the reverence and love befitting God’s creation.

Our collect, the opening prayer for Mass, is full of very similar requests. We asked God to give us the resolve to “run forth to meet Christ with righteous deeds at his coming.”

“Run forth” – let’s start there – God has come, and God will come again. And just like the returned exiles, we so want that closeness with him, want it so much that we want to run to him, and we know we can’t do that without God’s help, so we ask for it. Advent is meant to be all about waiting. But this prayer tells us what that waiting is meant to look life. It’s not calm, passive, bored waiting. It’s running. It’s running to meet Christ.

And then we ask to run to meet him with righteous deeds. And that’s not a two-step process, as if we accrue enough righteous deeds then we get to cash them in and meet Christ. No, as we heard in last week’s reading, we meet Christ in the poor served, whatever we do to the least of these, we do to Jesus. The righteous deeds are the running, and the righteous deeds are the meeting. And yes it’s furtive, it’s still kind of hidden, it will be more glorious at the end of time, and we long for that. The Sacred Heart litany calls Christ the “fiery furnace of charity,” and a fiery furnace is different from a little candle flame. But a candle flame is real. And we really meet Christ when we serve the poor.

Here in this Eucharist, in every Eucharist, we come to offer to God all that we’ve offered in the past week. It’s not just the bread and the wine that get offered, that get transformed, that God uses to feed us, to meet us. At Masses this weekend, we get extra symbol that when we’re offering the Eucharistic Prayer, we’ll be surrounded by the gifts that you’ve brought to share your Christmasses with those in need, which are a helpful reminder of all we offer in addition to the bread and wine. When in the Eucharistic Prayer I say, “look upon the oblation of your people” (the oblation, the offering, the gifts), I’m not just talking about the bread and wine, I’m not just talking about the presents, I’m talking about all the ways we’ve given of ourselves. “Meet us doing good” we’re praying. And God says, “Gladly!” And bread and wine become Christs’ own body, blood, soul and divinity, that we might be fed with him and meet him in that most intimate of ways. And all of our other offerings are transformed too, rejoiced over, and are ways God meets us.