Wednesday was an Advent evening, not merely an evening in Advent. Several of us were gathered in the basement beneath Charter Hall awaiting our guests for the Room In the Inn ministry. Our driver had departed for the urban ministry center an hour before. Why had he not returned? With temperatures soaring, it felt like a December night in Miami. ‘Perhaps our services will not be needed until a deep freeze hits the Carolinas,’ we began to surmise. None the less, our eyes still focused upon the glassed entrance of the north portico.

This is always the posture of Advent. At no other time are Christians more receptive to the serendipitous arrival of holy Other. We stand on tip-toed expectancy in this mystical season. On Wednesday we peered back at a door as if we were expecting royalty to enter. Dysfunctional families, and that includes many of us, still exchange seasonal greetings with captions from Hallmark in the hope that hardened hearts will be softened and that civility will return after years of callous indifference or hostility. During Advent we still sing at the top of our lungs, ‘Come, thou long expected Jesus,’ as if we really believed in some sort of second coming.

And that is precisely why we waited with expectancy near the north side portico. Perhaps we might catch a glimpse of holy presence; perhaps we might experience a redemptive encounter as we meet the face of a stranger during Advent. After all, did not our Master say, ‘Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’?

About the moment we had all given up on the prospects of anyone’s arrival, our evening guests appeared. They were affable fellows, the kind of folks we have known in other contexts: men down on their luck, suddenly without funds for rent. They carried common names. They entered with the same sort of Advent expectations we all share: a receptive spirit, a non-judgmental greeting, a touch of compassion.

The second Sunday of Advent is often identified with the message of a certain wilderness prophet: John, the son of Elizabeth and Zechariah. John stood waste deep in the cold waters of the Jordan, looking like a homeless man. With protruding eyes, he gazed into the crowds from nearby Jerusalem. Perhaps he too was looking for the Messiah as he addressed those gathered along the river’s bank. ‘I baptize you with water for repentance,’ he shouted with the vehemence of a crazed fanatic. ‘But one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.’

Advent for John was a time for spiritual inventory. These were the waters of radical repentance. ‘All of Judea’ went out to observe this strange phenomenon. Herod Antipas’ court became nervously obsessed with the Advent inventory conducted by this wilderness prophet. Yet, John was not deterred. He courageously declared that one cannot be ready for the Messiah until one undergoes radical repentance. John’s message became the conscience of a troubled nation.

A few days ago ninety-five religion scholars, including my friend Stanley Hawerwas of Duke, signed a document entitled, ‘Declaration Concerning Religion, Ethics, and the Crisis in the Clinton Presidency.’ Among the things addressed was the theological understanding of authentic repentance. These scholars of ethics vigorously asserted that the current crisis is a defining moment in American history. Authentic repentance must be coupled with acts of moral accountability. These scholars also insisted that certain moral qualities are central to the survival of a just culture: ‘truthfulness, integrity, respect for the dignity of others, adherence to the constitutional process and a willingness to avoid the abuse of power.’

Advent indeed endorses such language. This is not a time for reviving the spirit of moral McCarthyism. This is not a time for Salem witch hunts and the invasion of privacy; but it is a time for collective accountability and a pervasive examination of our core values.

So, during this second week of Advent every one of us in our own way has been looking with expectation for the arrival of God’s spirit. We have been longing for the coming of Jesus, or at least the rustling winds of his compassionate Spirit blowing around us. Mother Teresa confessed that each morning in Calcutta she set out upon her routine agenda, searching for the face of Jesus. And she always found that face among the least of these in a city of poverty and disease.

In his remarkable classic entitled, The Hungering Dark, the novelist Frederick Buechner tells about attending mass in St. Peter’s cathedral on Christmas Eve years ago. Everyone awaited with such eagerness the entrance of the Pope, led by the majestically dressed Swiss Guard. Singing of Adeste Fidelis and Heilige Nacht broke out like brush fire. Then entered the man himself in that crowded room of Renaissance splendor. Buechner observed that ‘through the thick lenses of his glasses his eyes were larger than life, and he peered into my face and into all the faces around me and behind me with a look so keen and so charged that I could not escape the feeling that he must be looking for someone in particular . . . . I felt that I knew whom he was looking for.’

The prophet Isaiah stole our line of Advent expectation when he envisioned the coming One as the embodiment of righteousness. Isaiah envisioned the arrival of a righteous leader who ‘shall not judge by what his eyes see . . . but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide wit h equity for the meek of the earth.’

As we engage in Advent inventory, we cannot hope for more than this. And we dare not hope for less. For as we begin to see ourselves as we really are and as we earnestly repent of our sin and reach for God’s hand of mercy, we shall also behold the face of the merciful Christ through the lives of those to whom we show mercy.

1. Matthew 25:40 NRSV

2. Matthew 3:11 a

3. The Wall Street Journal , Monday, November 30, 1998, editorial page.

4. Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark (New York: Seabury Press, 1969), p. 115.

5. Isaiah 11:4 NRSV

6. Isaiah 11: 6, 9 NRSV