FROM THE PASTOR

Advent Longing

As I watched the Sunday School children “singing” “Go Tell It On the Mountain” through sign language I was remembering such moments when my own children and grandchildren participated.  I remember sitting in the audience in Hyde Park and craning my neck to see my granddaughter Ruth as she emerged onto the stage with other “Chinese” dancers for her moment in Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.”  My joyful expectation was met with her radiant smile, the confident movement of her lithe body in the dance, her abandonment to the music.  As she made her triumphal exit she craned her own neck to see who was with her and our eyes met.  She rewarded me with a smile for the ages.

Then my mind and memory went to a beautiful sunny day in Times Square when I felt the vibration of my cell phone.  A voice spoke to me from a phone booth in Nairobi, “Dad, you have a granddaughter.”  The announcement of that news is one of those incredible moments in the journey of a life shared by millions. The announcement of a baby is at the heart of Advent longing.

But it goes deeper.  At that time my hands had never held Ruth Victoria, yet I already loved her and, in some way, knew her.  In the following days there were the regular grandparent reports which came via the internet.  I greeted Ruth and her brother John every time I opened my refrigerator or turned on my computer.  In the coming days other hands held her: her parents, teachers and children in Kibeta School (in Bukoba, Tanzania); Bishop Buberwa and her Uncle Jeremy at the baptismal font.  I hadn’t met her yet had received my new status in my Swahili name:  Babu Ruth (Grandfather of Ruth).  I was already Baba John.

Scripture is the record of the presence of the One we know and already love even though we have not seen him face-to-face.  The Magi had pictures in the prophecies of a Messiah.  Israel longed for one they already knew as the lover of orphans, widows, and strangers in their midst.  Scripture records and makes present the promise of Immanuel, the God for whom we wait and who is yet very much with us.  Other hands held that baby: his mother, father, shepherds, Magi, his Aunt Elizabeth.  Our hands stretch out and placed within them is the host.  “Take and eat, this is my body.”  We too hold the baby.

Years ago, in Advent, I stretched out my hands and held a person whom I had already come to love though we had not met until that moment in the airport.  Some are called to be parents and grandparents.  Others are called, like Anna and Simeon, to embrace many loved ones in their circle of family of friends. May the children in your life, and the loved faces which smile at you from your refrigerator and screen saver, be a sign that unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord, whose hands stretch out to hold us and all creation.

Stephen Paul Bouman

a.k.a. Babu Ruth, Baba John, Babu Sophia, Baba Luke