The Second Sunday of Advent
December 8, 2013
Listen to this homily (mp3 file)
If you came this morning hoping for some comfort, you are in luck. And if
you are ready for a little challenge, you won’t be disappointed. There’s
enough comfort in today’s scriptures – and enough challenge – to change the
world and, more to the point, enough to change each one of us.
Isaiah is the comforter today with his blessed
vision of peace. And John the Baptist is the challenger – John, the
disturber of the peace.
I happened to read over the familiar passage from
Isaiah the same day that Jeff Bezos was all over the news with his dream of
using drones to deliver Amazon packages. After my initial disbelief (!), I found
myself wondering why we treat Isaiah’ prophecy as pure fantasy but take the
drone dream quite seriously. They’re not the same, of course –- technology
and prophecy. Technology, for one thing, is much easier to manage and
predict than human behavior. But Isaiah should still have the advantage because
his dream is not his, it’s God’s! God is the one who dreams of a peaceable
kingdom where the poor are on top of the heap and the lowly have the power. God
is the one who dreams of a world where mortal enemies become friends, wolves
live alongside lambs, lions graze with cows, children play by the cobra’s den,
and all the human family lives in peace.
Fantasy? It seems so. It’s certainly a
fantastic leap from the world as we know it. But, my friends, Advent is about
making leaps. Advent prepares us to welcome Jesus our Savior, God’s almighty
Word, who in the midnight of a very dark world, made the huge leap from heaven
to earth, becoming one of us, and forever changing the very nature of reality,
or maybe I should say, forever giving reality possibilities it never had before.
Once the Word became flesh, became one of us, our
human nature, blessed but wounded, received a whole new lease on life. It
took on new possibilities. And what once seemed to be sheer fantasy – a
peaceful world where justice reigns and the human family lives as one – that
became a real possibility, a divine possibility, thanks to the divine Word who
became one of us.
But, you’re probably saying, let’s be real. Christ
came over two-thousand years ago and nothing much has changed except, maybe, for
the worse. Wars wage, poverty prospers, selfishness reigns supreme. And even
those who believe in Christ fight among themselves, scandalously so. Far from
living in peace with each other, we tend to fan the flames of division -– often
in the very name of Christ!
But, my friends, we must not let our failures blur
the vision or define the real. Remember, the vision is God’s, not ours,
and the power to realize it is in Christ, and Christ has become one of us and,
through our Baptism, we have become one with him. And, yes, our flawed,
sinful human nature does get in the way, but no flaw of ours is equal to the
grace of Christ. And therein lies hope, the only antidote to the cynicism
which closes our hearts and shuts our eyes to God’s Great Vision.
I began by saying that Isaiah was the comforter
today and John the Baptist the challenger, the disturber of the peace. Perhaps
that wasn’t entirely fair. It’s true that John’s harsh, finger-pointing
words, “you brood of vipers, who can save you from the wrath to come?” are as
much a reproach to us as they were to the Pharisees and Sadducees who first
heard them. But John does more than point the finger of blame. He
also points with serene confidence to the Lamb of God, to the Christ, the one
far greater than him, the one whose sandals he is not worthy to carry.
This one, says the Baptist, is the real Baptizer because he will baptize with
the Holy Spirit and with fire. And, my friends, that’s the
Baptism we have received. It is! It should be a fire within us, stirring
us, transforming us. But our baptism will not burn within us unless we let
it, and it will not change us unless we want to be changed. There are so
many ways we can negate the power, the divine power, of our Baptism.
So let me pose a question for all of us: What
reality do we choose to live in? The tired-out reality of the status quo,
of ‘things never change?’ If Nelson Mandela had chosen that path, South Africa
would still be in the grip of apartheid and the world would never have had one
of its great iconic leaders. Holding on to things as they are is a
surefire way to assure that things will never change, and that things like
hatred, selfishness and greed will continue to rule the day. We can settle for
that, of course, or we can follow Mandela and work to build a different kind of
world entirely – the world of Isaiah’s prophecy, the revolutionary world that
Jesus came to make possible.
The French writer, Georges Bernanos, in his great
novel The Diary of a Country Priest, spoke eloquently to this point.
“Faith,” he wrote, “is not a thing which one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape
our lives by it.” And there is a lot of truth there. And a lot of
wisdom. And if we do cease to let faith shape our lives, well, then we will end
up losing hope, for hope cannot survive without faith’s great vision. And
neither can we!
My friends in Christ, each year we celebrate Advent
and Christmas because we need to be teased, tantalized by a vision which can
seem more fantasy than reality. But to stop believing in the vision would
be the ultimate sell-out. Why? Well, because God believes in us.
And God is depending on us to make His dream come true.
Father Michael G. Ryan
