Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin our liturgical year in the book of Isaiah. Speaking to God, Isaiah asks why God allows us to wander from his ways and harden our hearts. Isaiah acknowledges God’s anger over our sinful ways and asks that God heal us. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus counsels his disciples to be watchful and alert because we don’t know when “the time will come.” He likens this to a man who goes on a long journey and leaves his servants in charge. Since they don’t know when the man will return they need to be watchful and not be asleep when he returns.

Welcome to the new liturgical year and the beginning of Advent. For those keeping track of these things we are now in Cycle B in the lectionary. The season of Advent begins four weeks before Christmas and uses imagery of light out of darkness. After the readings of the last few weeks we can use more light.

Except these readings appear at first blush to be more of the same. Again with the parable of how we need to be watchful because we don’t know when the master will return. I hope I’m not the only one who wearies of variations of “Just wait till your father gets home.” It’s almost as if we’re being told to fear the master’s return. Even Christmas carols participate: look at the lyrics of Santa Claus is Coming To Town (“you better not…”).

This belief has deep roots. Many of us learned of the gifts of the Holy Spirit while preparing for our confirmation; they come from the 11th Chapter of Isaiah and the last one is “fear of the Lord.” But should we truly fear the Lord? And if so, what does that do to that relationship?

Now I hope as adults we don’t fear the Lord like we fear heights or large predators. But if we think about words like “respect” that doesn’t seem like enough. We need to look at God with a sense of awe and wonder, not shock and awe. The thought of the coming of the Messiah should give us a sense of peace and joy, not hypertension and perspiration.

Perhaps we can read today’s readings with the sense that the servants are looking forward to the master’s return. If he is truly a good and wise master the servants should miss him when he’s gone and anticipate his return. The author Doris Kearns Goodwin is known for her books on Abraham Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Lyndon Johnson but she also wrote a wonderful memoir about growing up as a Brooklyn Dodger’s baseball fan in the 1940s and 1950s. When she was young her father taught her how to fill out a scorecard to be able to keep track of the game. Most games back then were played during the day and she spent countless summer afternoons listening to the game on the radio and filling out her scorecard. Her father worked in Manhattan and would take the train home, not arriving until after the game was over. Young Doris would greet him at the door and as she sat on his lap before dinner she would proudly go over the game with him, batter by batter, play by play, pitch by pitch and review the entire game with him. Years later she learned that he would pick up the afternoon paper at the train station and read about the game on his way and so he knew how it went by the time she saw him.

But no matter, it became a sacred ritual for them, a time to share not only the love of the game but the love of each other. Her anticipation of her father coming in the front door was as much of the ritual as was the scorecard. That time of anticipation was a joyful anticipation; the time on his lap wouldn’t have been so joyful had it not come out of a time of waiting.

I think that’s how we need to look at Advent. We’ll spend time in the next month with our friend Isaiah and we’ll read about imagery of seeing light out of darkness. But I think it’s important to recognize that seeing the light in the darkness enhances our lives if we first seek the light.

Obviously I need not list all the bad things happening in our world, that’s what social media is for. It can seem these days that hope is becoming a scarcer resource and finding it can be exhausting. But if we look over our history that’s never not been true. Those that awaited the Messiah lived an anticipation that we do not and they kept the faith. They kept the faith despite Roman occupation. They kept the faith despite the fact that several of their fellow Jews turned their back on their people and cooperated with and profited from the Romans.

I don’t say this to shame us but to recognize that darkness is not a new experience. We say that it’s always darkest before the dawn but that’s not true: it’s always darkest at midnight. But as we approach dawn we grow weary and sometimes despairing that the light will come. The darkness doesn’t come from the sky but from our restless hearts.

If history is any guide the next several weeks are going to be busy ones: sending out Christmas cards, baking, fighting for parking spaces at the local malls (or fighting for bandwidth on our computers). Many of us put great pressure on ourselves to have the perfect Christmas for ourselves and our loved ones.

At the end of the day hopefully we can carve out some time to recognize that our father will come home and will have spent his commute joyfully anticipating the time when we will sit in his lap and tell him about the baseball game. Then finally we will put “just wait till you father gets home” in its proper context. By the way her book is called Wait Till Next Year and makes a great stocking stuffer.