Let us pray: O God, we rest here with spirits straddling the ancient and the present, and even with future on our mind. May your presence speak to us from wisdom of old and from the experience of the now. May we be led to new discoveries through modern form and ancient insight. Amen.

It was impossible for Rich to separate the virtual and real worlds. In fact, it was a mistake to even consider that they were different. How could they be when his circle of friends were present with him in real time, all the time regardless of whether they were in the North American Eastern or Indochina time zone. The only thing that seemed to create a gap in connection was the time that he and his friends spent sleeping, and with fourteen hours separating him and his ESL teacher friend in Thailand, there was a lot of time in the day when one was awake while the other was asleep. Even so, they could share a lot of their world. Rich regularly posted short videos on Youtube made with his iPod nano and his friend Brian would counter with a response recorded with the laptop webcam. Occasionally when or the other was either up early or burning the midnight oil, they would have a real time conversation with Skype. The topics of these conversations were a combination of social and one could even say philosophical, although that description made it sound more esoteric than it really was. Rich and Brian were continually trying to integrate their lives – such that the way they lived matched as best they could what they believed about life on earth. As already described, communication was vital to their existence. They were continually exploring every new option to stay in touch, accepting each innovation not with a sense of awe regarding how it was possible, but with an expectation. Evolution in technology, especially with respect to communication had always been a part of their lives, and they expected nothing different as they aged.

In their ongoing quest to integrate life and values, they pursued every connection they could make. Rich was convinced of the power of good in the world, but he was also very aware of the massive possibility that human activity could soon and quickly result in irreparable change and even threat to the world as they knew it. Having been born in as members of the millenial generation they in no way had the expectation that their parents and especially their grandparents had lived with, namely that the world was on an ever improving evolutionary path. As much as they expected unthinkingly for new and better ways to communicate, they also had no expectation that the world could survive forever in its present state.

Rich was also sure, however that human kind could not know everything. Amazing things had happened in the past, things that convinced him of a divine presence. Rich was a person who acknowledged the spiritual aspect of life – that's what drove his belief in the power of good in the world. In fact, he often felt that the concept of good and God were the same. He was also convinced, because of the way that things worked in his generation that with the right message and some key connections that humans could be motivated to live for good in the world. He often scoured Youtube and other resources in the cloud looking for the presence of good/God.

It was while he was engaged in this type of activity one day that he hit upon the word Magnificat. Someone had linked the Song of Mary with liberation theology, a theology that had sprung up among Latin American campesinos, who interpreted the Magnificat as a manifesto against the oppression they were experiencing. Rich read how itinerant priests had lived in barrios with the peasant farmers and in something like the time when the Gutenberg printing press had opened up the bible for the average people, these Latin American villagers with the help of the priests who simply provided them with the bible and let them read the words there for themselves, had indeed read the story of Mary and Jesus with new eyes and ears – eyes and ears that spoke to them in their condition, a message that God was for them. Liberation theologians called it God's preferential option for the poor.

In 1970 terms, liberation theology had gone viral, spreading among the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America, opening up new understandings of the way in which God breaks through old patterns and understandings and offers hope to people who had lived without hope in many ways. It had gone viral in other communities as well, feminist theology and a theology of liberation for people of all sexual orientations could trace their roots to its Latin American birthplace.

Rich read all this and got excited. The formality of religion took on a different meaning for him. Spirituality and religion became connected in a new way.

Twenty centuries earlier Ben was going about his life pretty much as usual. As much as Rich could not separate the virtual and the real world, Ben could not separate the real world and the spirit world. Being a Jew it was just part of his being that body and soul would be experienced as one. Everything that happened was under God's control. The moon which was so puzzling and mysterious to him was under God's control. God had a reason for making it change the way it did, just as God had control of the canopy that created the difference between day and night. It was not even a topic for reflection for Ben, it just was, a part of life. When he heard the priests reciting the psalms, and talking about heart and kidney and breath and feeling God's presence in these earthy references, it was just the way it was for him, not something to be pondered, just something to be accepted. Communication for Ben was all story telling, the conversations he had with his family, the words he shared with his fellow goat herders and the farmers who also lived in and near his village. The only connection he had with the written word was when he went to synagogue and heard some of the words of scripture being read from scrolls. He did not know how to read them, but he enjoyed hearing the words of faith being said, reminding him of the traditions that were his and the expressions of hope that could be found in the words of the prophets.

Ben was aware of the political situation, but it had not much affect on him. He would see the Roman centurions passing through and by his village and travelers to his community would tell stories of the things that the Romans had done. He knew the story of his people, and even though he could not pinpoint the ways in which the Roman overlords had power over him, there was a deep longing in his soul to be free, just as his Hebrew ancestors had struggled to be free.

Ben also knew there were movements among his people to put the struggle into action. He had heard that followers of a prophet named Jesus were meeting secretly. Word was that they had to be secretive because the Romans were anxious about the political aspects of this group. He had heard that Jesus had been executed because of the threat that his words and actions had presented for the Roman rulers. Word had it that there were some among his own people who were scared to challenge Roman rule because it would only bring even more hardship for his people. They had reportedly co-operated with the ones who had wanted to deal with Jesus.

He wasn't sure what led him to find out more about these secret meetings, but he had talked to some of his fellow villagers and they told him to look for the sign of the fish. One day he saw it scratched into the dust alongside one of the less well-used paths in town, and he had looked around and found a small group gathered together. It was a house meeting that seemed in some ways like synagogue, but different too. There was someone there leading like a priest, but not a priest. He was telling a story about Jesus – this one was a magical story about the birth of Jesus, and what was especially interesting to Ben was the song that Mary sang, a song that inspired the ones gathered there to dream of a time when they would once again be free, free to worship the way they wanted without having to be secretive, and free to speak out the words of justice which had always been the word of God.

There were outsiders at that meeting – people who had come to his village from a place beyond his ken – more than half a day's walk away. There was a story told of how this message was spreading. Ben was amazed to hear that even more than the Roman people there were others – Gentiles someone called them – who were also meeting secretly, to hear a story that was compelling because it opened up the way of God in new ways. Because it spoke of changes that could make his life a little less hard, not so much for him, but for the yearning that occupied his life beyond the day to day hardship, even if the day to day existence was occupied in fulfilling it, namely the ongoing survival of his children. It was them he lived for, and their future was a major part of his own goal in life.

Ben would not even have any sense of what it means to go viral, but in late first century terms that's exactly what he was a part of.

How can we compare the lives of Ben and Rich? So different in so many ways.

Advent is an ancient season – older even than its name. And yet, human kind is always involved in advent. What is it that we long for? What is it that gives meaning to life? Are Rich and Ben so different after all? I believe these two men, separated by ninety or twenty centuries are the stuff of this season of waiting and coming for us – dare we say – post modern Christians. We will sing in the coming season hymns that use language and ideas that are strange to us – even those written only a century ago – and yet also incredibly familiar. We long for the ancient story, and we live in hope for the future. We seek the joy that is promised, we are called to be messengers of joy – the promise of God present and yet-to-come that is the puzzling and mysterious mood of this season.

Advent calls us to make connections between the modern and the ancient, to find the familiar in the very different lives of Ben and Rich, to consider like Rich how good and God are so often the same, while trying to live the deeply integrated life of Ben where spirit and real world are never separated, where earthiness and spirit are deeply intertwined.

We wait – expectantly like the farmer – delighting in the mystery and yet also ready and attuned for signs of The Spirit even now. Amen.