LIT5E

There is no mistaking the season. Route One A is all bedecked with lights and ribbons. It is as if there is a North Shore ordinance that no street light or telephone pole may go unfestooned.

My house is not immune, by any measure, either. As soon as the turkey had been consumed, the children pleaded for the old, tattered box to be retrieved from the closet and its treasures sprinkled about, to ensure that one and all know that ordinary time has been suspendedand that great things are afoot.

Everywhere--but one place. Here. In church

Notice that the pulpit is not ablaze with red and green. The altar and pulpit are dressed in purplenot our most festive of colors. Nothing here proclaims the festivities of Christmas. And the minister of the church where Father Tad and I first met each other, Peter Gomes,, if you were to wish him a Merry Christmas today, would politely remind younot yet.

But we know this.

When we unpack our family crèches and put out all of the figurines, we leave one aside. It is fine to bring out the Santas, the bright lights and the evergreensbut it is too early for the real business of the season. Our crèche is empty without the Christ-child, hidden in a drawer.

This emptiness, this incompleteness, of the crèche is echoed elsewhere in the Church year. Walk into a liturgical church on Holy Saturday. The tabernacle is empty and the altar, naked. It is as if there is no God present in the world. We are truly, truly alone. If this is really the state of affairs then we have the freedom that Frederic Nietzsche promisedthat if there is no god then everything is possible.

But sit down in the pew on Holy Saturday or truly contemplate Advent's empty crèche. It takes almost no time to realize Nietzsche's freedom is agony. We quickly long for the connection to the Reason of the universe. The notion of an abandoned humanity is terrifying to consideryet, yet, there in front of us in the hollow tabernacle of Holy Saturday or the empty crèche of Adventit cannot be escaped. We must confront it.

In the Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation or "midrash," there is a technique of the filling in the story when the text is silent. In today's Scripture we read about the Angel's appearance to Mary. The Angel gives Mary the Good Newsthat she has been chosen to bring the Lord into the world. But this was not in the form of a commandrather it was in the form of a request: Will you, Mary, accept? She does and Luke tells us that the Angel soon departs.

But where did the Angel go? Where is the Angel now?

My midrash is that the Angel's work is not over. It continueshere, nowthat he asks each of us the same question he posed to Mary: Will you accept? Will you bring the Lord into the world?

That is why there are no festive lights here; why Peter Gomes does not yet wish us Christmas greetings; why the crèche is empty, we still have to choose.