A Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent
Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10   James 5:7-10   Matthew 11:2-11

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound?

The question is posed in the poem “Ash Wednesday,” T. S. Eliot’s searing indictment of modernity’s spiritual sterility. 

The poet immediately answers the question, 
Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Our culture’s Christmas season races ahead of the church’s. It now begins about two weeks before Thanksgiving and ends promptly on the morning of Dec. 26, when Walmart sets out its Valentine’s Day stock. And by then, most are desperate to move on, once again feeling cheated by the promise of Christmas. 

In her Scriptures and prayers, however, the church does not look toward Bethlehem until Dec. 17. And each year, on the second and third Sundays of Advent, she wanders back into the Judean desert to ponder again the meaning of John the Baptist and the word he preached.

Eliot’s words correspond to the Baptist’s call to ready ourselves for the coming of the Word. We do that by shunning sin, which one might even describe as “distraction from the deity,” a losing of ourselves in the whirling of the world.

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word. 

For the church, the path to Bethlehem passes through the Judean desert. Somehow, we must go where life ceases to whirl “about the centre of the silent word.” We must seek out the silence and dwell within it, as John did when he entered the Judean desert. There God awaits.

I will allure her now;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak persuasively to her (Hos 2:16).

We enter the desert each time we try to pray contemplatively, attempting simply to be in the presence of God without the ring of our many recited words. For it is only when we stop trying to speak that 

the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world

…can be heard by us.
So often we avoid silent, wordless prayer. Why? Before the silence speaks to us by not speaking, it terrifies us with the possibility that there is no God, no ears that hear, no heart that cares for us. Silence also dredges up the doctrines of our faith and makes them sound hollow, impossible to believe. Wordless prayer is like skating on ice. The thrill is not possible without sliding across the treacherous adamantine. 

Today, we are told that the way to Bethlehem lies through the silence of the Judean desert. Otherwise, there is nothing but the whirl of the unstilled world.

Far from applauding the resilience and freedom of the modern age, T. S. Eliot suggested that we have become like children who cannot stop searching, even as they insist there is nothing to be found. We want the divine, we want what lies beyond the world—there in Bethlehem—yet we are terrified of passing through the quiet desert of Advent.

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

On this third Sunday of Advent, when Christmas has yet to come for the church and society’s is almost spent, we again hear an ancient promise:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song (Is 35:1).

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.