Fourth Sunday of Advent: Waiting for a Messiah Out of a Surplus Longing for Life

The Christmas season has a peculiar tendency of causing the human heart to swell with anxious anticipation and a universal hope for a reality much different then the one we have grown all too familiar with. In 1984, Irish Singer Bob Geldof, moved by the suffering in Ethiopia due to horrific famine, wanted to write a Christmas song to raise funds to relieve the plight of the suffering. The song, "Do They Know It's Christmas?", sung by some of the most popular artists of the 80's, raced to the top of the charts upon it's release and occupied the number one slot for five consecutive weeks. The climax of the song that rang out over and over again on the radio airwaves was a veritable "prophetic protest" against a brutal reality that simply shouldn't be: "Feed the World! Let them know it's Christmas time!" In 1992, Amy Grant revised and popularized the song, "Grown Up Christmas List." The song speaks to the the mature longing for what the Christmas season should bring: "No more lives torn apart, and wars would never start, and time would heal all hearts. Every one would have a friend, and right would always win, and love would never end."


Where do such hopes and longings arise from? Are they simply "pie-in-the-sky" ideals, forever out of reach, or do they point to something more profound at the core of the human heart, spirit, and soul? I believe that the latter, is, of course, the case. At the heart of every person who has ever endeavored to live a truly and fully human life is a "surplus longing for life." Some have said that at the core of who we are lies an empty void that can only be filled by God. While this is certainly one way of describing the angst that we often feel when life doesn't quite measure up to our hopes and aspirations, another way is to say that at the core of our selves is a "surplus longing for life." Far from a mere "emptiness" or "void", this sacred "energy" in our heart is meant to always be unnerved by a longing that no amount of eating, drinking, drugging, debauching, or acquiring can slake. In fact, to try and slake this "surplus longing" by filling ourselves is to bring about it's vengeance. How can we possibly fill what is by definition an unyielding desire for fullness? How do we live with such an unnerving tension? I would suggest that we first acknowledge it and then, simply let it be. By doing so, this "surplus longing" yields a creative and powerful vision of what life can and should be, not only for ourselves, but for our entire world.


I would like to suggest that acknowledging the "surplus longing for life" and simply letting it be is precisely what the prophet Samuel and the Virgin Mary do in this past Sunday's readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent. After Samuel is told by King David that David plans to build a temple for God, Samuel is gripped by an intuition and vision that it isn't David who is to build a house, but God who will build a house for David, ensuring that David's reign will never end. This is the first, explicit oracle that points to the Messiah. In the Gospel, Mary is visited by the Angel Gabriel who tells her that she will "be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit" and will give birth to the Son of God. The readings make explicit what Samuel and Mary do in response to God's oracles; however, what we can assume is that these oracles came, in part, as a result of Samuel and Mary learning to accept and live with the "surplus longing" at the core of their persons. A famous theologian once said that, "every symphony must remain unfinished." What he meant by this is that the symphony that is our lives, and the symphony that is the world, no matter how beautiful, still inspires more than what we can realize this side of heaven. The point of the metaphor, the point of this weekends readings, and the point of the surplus longing for life that drives us is to simply play the tune of Christ as beautifully as we can and leave it to God to conduct it into the final symphony of salvation.