The Vulnerable Season
What Child is This?
What child is this, who, laid to rest,
William Chatterton Dix
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?
Sonnet XIX (On His Blindness)
When I consider how my light is spent,
John Milton
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
We wait for a child
Advent is the season of waiting. We wait for the birth of a child – the most vulnerable of us who is also the most powerful – God who emptied himself to take on human flesh and dwell among us. God becomes like us so that we might become like God. This is Advent, the waiting for Emmanuel, God with us.
A child is not productive in the marketplace. They are not able to care for themselves. Caring for a child is exhausting, for years. Yet we celebrate this phase of life because of the compensations it offers now – love of and bonding with the child – as well as the possibility and as-yet-unrealized potential we see in the child. Infancy is the beginning of something – a life we have all known and experienced.
The vulnerable among us also wait
Others also wait – the disabled, those who are terminally ill, the very old. Their waiting is not valued in the same way as the waiting for a child. In some ways, it’s not so different, but it is harder to see the present compensations and future potential in this situation. The vulnerable are not productive in the marketplace. Some never had, and many have lost, the ability to care for themselves. Caring for them can be exhausting, for years. This time, too, is filled with possibility and as-yet-unrealized potential, but it scares us because we cannot see beyond the curtain of death.
The work of the vulnerable is to wait – everything that enabled them to be productive has been stripped away and so they wait. Waiting for God, not beyond this life, but here and now, is work that requires endless amounts of quiet and is easily dispelled by the busy-ness of the productive life. God does not need any one of us, and yet desires all of us – all of us collectively (every one of us) and all of us individually (each part of us) – and no one knows this better than the vulnerable.
They also serve who only stand and wait
God needs a conduit into the human world and it is through those who wait.
John Milton knew this. Milton went totally blind at the age of 46. In his Sonnet XIX, he mulls over this loss and wonders whether it will be held against him that he could no longer serve God in ways he used to, even though he was zealously desirous of doing so. (“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”/I fondly [foolishly] ask.)
The answer comes that any gifts Milton might have were given to him by God, so God does not need them, and besides, there are plenty of people to do God’s bidding in an active way. Milton (using the voice of “patience”) concludes that he must do what he can – “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
In this season of Advent, let us take time from our productive lives to wait and to accompany those whose work is to wait.
Come, Emmanuel, God with us.