The Sauntering Pilgrim

When I saw the question, I forgot everything else. It was only three words, part of a series of text messages, and may have made sense as part of the whole conversation. But in that first moment, it made no sense at all; it drew me to a place where sense was irrelevant, a place where a different reality opened in front of me, like a parable of Jesus or a Zen koan. The question was this: “Are you tomorrow?” It may be the question of Advent.

Most of the time during Advent, we get caught up in another question, one circulating 2,000 years ago. People asked it of John, the forerunner of Jesus – “Are you the messiah?” – wondering if he might be the one they expected (Luke 3:15). John, verging on disillusionment in his prison cell, asked it of Jesus when Jesus fell short of his expectations, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt. 11:3). The high priest asked it of Jesus during his trial, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (Mark 14:61).

During Advent, we ask the question for at least two reasons. First, we ask it to recall the season of heightened expectation leading up to the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We may not feel the same degree of expectation today, but if in our imagination we take ourselves back to that time, perhaps we can have a taste of it. Perhaps today’s dull familiarity of it may give way, at least for a moment, to the miracle of it, and we may feel our hearts touched, changed.

The second reason we ask the question, though we don’t like to admit it, is because we’re not satisfied with the first incarnation and are hoping for another, final, decisive one – a so-called “second coming” at “the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). If the first incarnation didn’t meet our expectations, surely another one will. And we’re left wondering, will the next one be at the “end of the age” that Matthew’s gospel mentions? Will it be tomorrow? “Keep awake,” Jesus said, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” only that it will happen “at an unexpected hour” (Matt. 24: 42, 44).

Which brings me back to the question that initially caught my attention, “Are you tomorrow?” It’s a variation of a question the world rightly asks of us who profess to be the body of Christ in the world today, the most recent incarnation of God. “Are you the one who is to come,” the world asks, “the one we’ve been waiting for, or are we to wait for someone else?” The world is asking us, “Are you the dawn from on high that will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and will you guide our feet into the way of peace (Luke 1:78f)?” Are you tomorrow?

Last week we heard John’s warning in the wilderness about one who is coming “to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary” and to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire (Luke 3:17). It’s the clearing and burning of the chaff that will clarify us as light to put on a lampstand to shine before the world (Matt. 5:14-16). But be careful how you hear John’s warning.

The chaff that will be separated and burned is not anyone who fails to measure up to God’s high standards. No one measures up to those standards, and God makes us whole anyway, making the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sending rain upon the just and the unjust” (Matt. 7:45). That’s what grace is about.

Chaff is part of everyone’s life. Chaff is the dry, outer casing of cereal grains, indigestible to humans, that protects the kernel as it grows and matures. When the kernel matures, the chaff is separated and cast away so the grain can be used for its intended purpose. As every one of us grows and matures, the parts of us that have supported and protected us up to that time, the less seemly aspects of our nature, are cast off and thrown away as refuse. Then our kernel, the heart of our being, the core of who we are, is liberated for its long-intended purpose.

The same is true for any church. The founders of any congregation built an organization and erected a building as a center of ministry in this community, and it has served its purpose well. But what if its deeper purpose was to support and protect something that at the right time would trigger the release of the chaff and the liberation of something at the core? And what if that time is now, and the purpose to which we are called is emerging from the darkness all around us in the dawn of this new day?

Now I realize I’m getting close to Mystery, perhaps a little too close, and I’m in danger of making the mistake Job made in his final confrontation with God, when he said to God: “I’ve spoken of things I don’t understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 40:4-5; 42:3). The older I grow, and the more I live with scripture, the more I realize the truth of the saying, “Those who know don’t say, and those who say don’t know.”

But still I’m drawn by that question, “Are you tomorrow?” Are we the tomorrow the world outside our door has been waiting for? Or are we yesterday, and the world should wait for another? Or are we tomorrow, ready to let the chaff fall away so we can live into the purpose for which God has brought us to this time and place? ▪