Carter Benjamin Lam

We wait in darkness.

Throughout the Old Testament, God commands his people more than a thousand times times to listen. This command is given through a handful of different phrases: turn your ear to me; incline your ear; hear; listen. This command’s prominence continues in the Gospels—for one example, those present at Jesus’ Transfiguration received only one command from the Father in that instance: the command to listen to his Son.

But we aren’t particularly good at listening, are we? We have phrases, such as “in one ear and out the other,” in order to describe this common malady—and this is evident from a young age. Imagine you have a five-year-old son (maybe you don’t have to imagine), he’s in the kitchen while you’re making dinner, and you tell him to not touch the hot stove. You tell him this for his own protection, of course—because you know that he’s mobile, he’s curious, and he’s just tall enough to reach the front burners. What a dangerous combination. To your amazement, during the two seconds that you had your back turned, his right hand has almost made it all the way to that saucepan full of boiling water. Right before he hurts himself, you sharply remove him from the scene. Once your nerves are settled to just below panic mode, you will have some questions for him. But your first question won’t be, “Why did you do that?” Instead, your first question will be something along the lines of, “Didn’t you hear what I just said to you,” or, “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

Obedience, as it turns out, begins with hearing and listening. After all, if we don’t listen to instructions and commands, how on earth could we ever determine whether we’re obeying those instructions and commands? In biblical Hebrew, the verb most often translated as “obey” is transliterated as shema. Yet, shema means more than just “obey.” It involves hearing, listening, paying attention, understanding, and then obeying. To the ancient Hebrew-speaking person, listening and obeying are a package deal, and obedience comes through listening. We would do well to internalize that.

Faith, we are told by St. Paul the Apostle, also comes through hearing and listening. Faith doesn’t come through seeing signs—when people in Jesus’ day saw him perform signs, they often demanded more signs as a condition of belief. Nor does faith come through reading the Bible silently by ourselves—as helpful as it is to be literate, it’s not the primary way that the Scriptures were meant to reach us. The Word of God was always meant to be given by the proclamation of flesh-and-blood people, and received by the hearing and listening of other flesh-and-blood people.

This all culminates in the fact that the Word of God eventually became a flesh-and-blood Person in Jesus.

And that’s precisely what we celebrate in the season of Advent. This is the beginning of our salvation: the Incarnation (enfleshment) of God in the Messiah, Jesus. Then with the Birth of Jesus, God is no longer merely audible—he is now visible and tangible as well.

Jesus’ arrival is indeed an arrival into darkness, but the darkness won’t survive beyond his arrival. “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). With Jesus’ Birth, we shall never have to live in utter darkness again.

Since today is the first day of Advent, the first day of the new Christian liturgical year, we start afresh our annual calling upon God to send his Messiah into the world. We do this in solidarity with the faithful throughout the millennia, and confess that there is indeed darkness all around us without God’s Light. But the darkness around us doesn’t prevent us from hearing—it only prevents us from seeing. So in the darkness, let us continue to hear, listen, and wait for God to make good on his promises. The Light is on his way. And when the Light arrives, we will finally see our salvation, just as old Simeon did (Luke 2:25–35).