Christmas Eve, 1941: Sergeant Sidney Stewart was preparing American troops to leave Manila to fight the Japanese in Bataan. Working late in his office, he looked up to find a white-robed Catholic priest at his door. Stewart, a Protestant boy from Oklahoma, did not know it, but his life would soon be intertwined with the frail-looking priest.
"I'm Father Cummings," the priest said. "I heard you boys were leaving in an hour or so. I wonder if I could go with you to Bataan. I'm sure that they will need me there." Father Cummings came along, but once there, Stewart lost track of him.
Then in April 1942, the Japanese captured Stewart's unit. "Yahura!" the guards yelled. "Start moving!" The infamous Bataan Death March had begun. Denied food and water and abused by their captors, thousands died.
A POW camp awaited survivors. There, as sadistic guards lined them up in the hot sun, Stewart felt a cool hand on his shoulder. It was Father Cummings! He was desperately thin, but radiated gentleness. Looking into the hopeless faces all around him, the priest muttered, "I must work harder. These men need me." That evening, the men listened as he spoke of God simply and directly. As Stewart recalls in his book, Give Us This Day, God "became a real presence beside us. We felt Him there."
In 1944, the prisoners were packed into the hold of a ship bound for Japan. Given no food or water, some, driven mad by thirst, cut the throats of their comrades and drank their blood. Events took a tragic turn when American pilots attacked the ship. Yet that night, over screams of pain and cries for water, there came a gentle voice: "Listen to me, men! You must listen to me." And then he began to pray. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . . "
Each night Father Cummings, sick and weak, prayed—and each night, sanity returned to the hold. Stewart wrote, "I looked forward every hour for night to come, when Father Cummings stood and said his prayer again. It was the only strength I had."
Finally a night came when the priest was too weak to stand. Stewart propped him up, and he slowly began to pray. "Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name . . . "
The cries of the men became still. "Thy will be done—on earth—as it is—in Heaven." A spasm of pain shook the priest, and he gasped for air. And then, with superhuman effort, he spoke one last time. "Give us this day . . . "
His body relaxed, and he was gone. But the memory of his sacrificial love sustained Stewart in the terrible months ahead.
This story reveals the reality of Christ's incarnation. Father Cummings volunteered, giving up everything to serve. He endured pain and suffering with the troops and brought the presence of God into a man-made hell on earth.
Jesus calls us to live His incarnation as well, to bring His presence into jobs, prisons, hospitals, and neighborhoods. By His grace we can follow Him, even into a nightmare of hell on earth, as Father Cummings did. "As the Father sent me," Jesus said, "so I send you."

This first day of Advent has me wondering about waiting and disappointment. There's a certain deliciousness to waiting, in that when you're preparing for something to happen or to arrive, that time is filled with possibility. You have not yet been disappointed by the actuality of the event or object. As a child I remember the anticipation of what I would get for Christmas. My mom would give us the Sears Wish Book (a catalogue of Christmas gifts) and we would circle what we wanted, which we generally never actually got. It took me years to realize that my Mom didn't actually shop at Sears but at the "BX", (or "PX") at the Air Force Base. This is sort of like a discount store filled with last year's products and off-brands that went unsold at regular stores, or simply just random stuff that the military got a deal on. So we got whatever happened to be on sale at the PX, which pretty much never was the cool stuff in the Sears Wish Book,(this wan an economic necessity given our military pay).
Herein lies the problem with Advent having turned into the period in which we wait for the holiday of Christmas, that glorious day in which we get to open presents and overeat - in this framework for waiting we're disappointed by all the wrong things; bad gifts, lousy relatives, over dry turkey etc... when what we should be disappointed in is the Christmas story itself, meaning that we never can predict how God will show up in the world. When advent is about waiting on God's incarnation into the world and into our lives, as it should be, then the outcome is much better. Don't get me wrong there is still disappointment in this story as well. The King of Glory coming to earth in the form of a ....drum roll please.....helpless baby of an unwed mother???? This is the kind of disappointment which illuminates God's upside-down kingdom on Earth. It is the kind of disappointment which satisfies like the fulfillment of personal desires cannot. This is a God of irony, which I find terribly comforting.

Dear God,
May we all be fulfilled with the the Holy Disappointment of Advent!
Save us from the idolatry of an American Christmas
In Jesus' name, AMEN