Love liberates. It gives the heart the strength to stand fast in moments of tremendous suffering. It buoys the mind when threatened by the darkness of disappointment and loss. It propels the stagnant and slow into the lives of others, bringing light and grace. It brings rebirth.
And it makes one dance.
On this final Sunday of Advent, Holy Mother Church puts before us the figure of John the Baptist. But it’s not the usual locust-eating, finger-pointing, wild-eyed John of the desert. This is the little child John, resting peacefully within the warm darkness of Elizabeth’s womb. But upon the herald of Mary’s greeting, an echo of the song she herself had learned from Gabriel only days before, his eyes snap open and a smile conquers the face that will one day look so stern. And he dances, leaping with abandon in the presence of Love made flesh. In his joy, he teaches his elderly mother to sing, giving her youthful strength to sing of God’s goodness and the Lord’s delight in the littleness of his chosen ones.
I wonder if John remembered this moment later in life. As he grew older, did the fragrance of this memory stay with him, unclear but ever present? As he sat imprisoned in his cell, the avowed enemy of Herod’s madness, did he remember something of this day of grace, when Love enfleshed taught him how to dance? He had other memories, to be sure. Of baptizing the Christ when he knew the righteous one was sinless; of being filled by the Holy Spirit to point and to shout at the Lamb of God as he walked by, allowing his own disciples to finally find what he himself could not give them; of his confusion and wonder as he sent his few remaining followers to ask the Chosen One if he was indeed who John thought he was, and the response so full of confidence and power. But the memory of the dance … that was what had enthralled him and ultimately propelled him into the desert. The memory of love.
Amid the many dramas and disappointments of our lives, ashamed and afraid of the brood of vipers within our own hearts, it can be so easy to forget the memory of God’s tender love, revealed in such a humble, simple and profound way in the little child of Mary’s womb. Infinity dwindled to infancy, the Little One will teach us how to dance again, if only we draw near to the manger, the altar and the poor, where he waits for us.
Within the womb of Elizabeth, John fell in love with the One who had leapt from the sky to love him. And this love made him dance, even unto glory. It was a love that gave him the strength to challenge the powerful and to comfort the afflicted, and to stand firm when all seemed to be lost. It gave him the strength to wait in the desert, waiting for the One who had visited him so many years ago. Of course he did come, and John danced again, forever young in the mansions of the Father.
May Emmanuel teach us too, in our brokenness and sadness, to dance and sing again. May we fall in love again with him who reaches out to us in the creche, longing to be held tight within the womb of our own hearts.
Get your shoes ready, my friends. Tomorrow shall be your dancing day.
Father Erickson is parochial vicar of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul.
Sunday, Dec. 22
Fourth Sunday of Advent
