A Prayer for the Third Sunday of Advent

Dear Jesus,

If they were not empty-handed, probably the shepherds were holding salvaged things: kindling, a branch plucked clean enough to be called a staff, an injured lamb, a blanket too shoddy for home. And probably, on seeing a sudden skyful of angels, some of the men out in the fields dropped what they carried and some reached for the nearest shoulder to steady themselves and some pressed their palms to their chests to keep their hearts from bursting. Probably joy staggered them, holy and inexplicable, and it wasn’t so much that they knew it would be stupid to talk about that shock of song and wing as theirs, as property. It wasn’t so much that they knew it would be stupid to lay claim to the Messiah. It was that ownership didn’t even come into it. 

Everything the shepherds knew about having and salvaging turned inside out. They’d been adopted by an infant. Everything they knew about miracles turned out to be preamble. The Word had become flesh; God had put on the image of God.

And then there’s us. Barely a shepherd in sight, which wouldn’t matter, Jesus, if it weren’t also true that we’re less open to amazement, more attached to comfort. The truth is we’re more comfortable with metaphor than miracle, more comfortable when no one’s empty-handed or staggered, and, too often, we would rather lay claim to the infant Christ than be adopted into a family where all our souls weigh the same. 

Which is why we’ll be no less dumbfounded than our scruffy forebears when you come again, though probably we’ll be slower to drop the instruments of our work and distraction. Probably we’ll even compare your return to a blow—failing, for a moment, to realize what it means: the righting of every last thing. 

So teach us to be quicker to recognize you, God with us, holy and inexplicable. And then return to us, turning everything we know about having and salvaging inside out, so that what we call joy now will weigh next to nothing compared to what we’ll call joy then. 

Amen.