Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10 | Romans 15:4-9 | Matthew 3:1-12

Almighty and merciful God, may no earthly undertaking hinder those who set out in haste to meet your Son, but may our learning of heavenly wisdom gain us admittance to his company who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

Today we celebrate the second Sunday preparing us for this great Feast of the Incarnation. Each of these Sundays is trying to open our eyes to this amazing, unheard of action on the part of God. He would actually come into the world and enter into a human form, the form of Jesus, who didn’t claim to be God. He claimed mostly to be the Son of Man. He wanted to be a human being. He wanted to be seen as a human being. So the trick is to understand that here is an example not of a perfect human being that we are called to be, because perfection is not the goal, but we are gifted with the presence of God within us as he was in Jesus. And that Spirit spoke to him and guided him and empowered him to do the things that he was called to do to open our eyes to what the world is really about and to who God really is and who we really are. So the beauty is that we have this model of what is promised to us in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament.

So when you look at that book, the first Book of Isaiah, you understand that so much in Isaiah is a prefiguring of what is coming in the New Testament. It’s amazing. I say this to you so often, but I’m so blessed to be ordained after the Vatican Council, because before that time, we did not have a steady exposure every Sunday to the Old Testament. We just had a gospel and an epistle, but now we read from both books, and it’s opening eyes everywhere, my eyes in particular. I can see so much more about the meaning of the Old Testament, how it is the foundation upon which you have to build this notion of who God is in the New Testament, the God who is intimate, who is present, who is within us, something completely foreign to anyone’s imagination in the Old Testament. How could God dwell inside humanity? So we look at this image in the first reading, and it’s a beautiful image of the Old Testament. It is like this gigantic tree with deep, deep roots, and it’s cut at the end of the Old Testament. There’s a cutting of this story. It’s not to say that it is worthless or useless, just the opposite. It’s almost like this tree has been radically trimmed from all the externals of the Old Testament, particularly the image of the law being the most important thing. The Old Testament is grounded in the law. It presumes so clearly, and it’s logical, that people who didn’t know what was true, what was right, they had to be told what was right by an authority figure outside of themselves, which ended up being the temple. And the temple took this role very seriously. It said, “Well, I want you to know that you are pleasing God. I want to create for you a world where you can be confident that you’re pleasing God. So here are some rules.” Actually we have ten rules from God, the Ten Commandments, but they’re vague. They’re really hard to figure out exactly how to apply them. So at this time in the history of God working with people, he said, “No, it’s best to give them rules and regulations. We will rule their life, govern their life.” And it was so complete, 613 laws, and so it was everything from how you wash your dishes to how you change your beds to how you worship to how you treat your brothers and sisters. It was really clear, and it gave people a sense that they were living according to God’s will, which is what people long to do for one particular reason — confidence that they will be loved, saved, healed. Performance was everything. Perform according to the law.

When you take that issue out, you’re looking at this root system that started with the story of creation, Adam and Eve, the patriarchs, the prophets, the priests, the kings, all that. It’s a long, long story. It started 4,000 years ago, but the first writings of the Old Testament are probably 3,000-plus years ago. So we have this story, which is the heart of everything for us as Christians. The story is everything. We’ve got to stick with the story, and it’s got to be a shift from the Old Testament to the New Testament that is not just — it’s not just a kind of slight improvement. Instead of being told what to do, which is what the Old Testament is teaching, the law, we are promised something that is beyond our imagination. We are told that we will be empowered. We will be infused with wisdom, with knowledge, and we will no longer need to be taught what to do, but we will know what is true, what to do. It’s that radical. It’s the difference between an authority outside of you guiding your life to an inner authority, which is not you, not just you trying to figure out what’s best or having the freedom to be able to choose whatever you think is best. No, that’s why the whole notion of the primacy of the human conscience has always been taught by the church. It’s always been one of his teachings, one of his primary teachings, but it’s so hard to understand, because it sounds so much like you’re saying to somebody, “You have the right to make your own decisions, and whatever you think is right is right.” Well, that’s not at all what it says. That’s like looking at a mystery, a mysterious thing and just glancing at it once and getting a first impression. No, it’s this mystical, mysterious process of you and me receiving this phenomenal gift, indwelling presence of God.

So we see in this first reading from Isaiah, this root system is now cut back to its just core, but we don’t lose that set of roots, never. We don’t lose the Old Testament. We must keep it in mind. We must learn it. We must know it in order to understand the New Testament. So then out of this stump comes this beautiful, new shoot, this green leaf. Now, if you’ve ever looked at a tree that was cut down and you see that the root system is still alive — you’d think the tree would die, because the tree’s gone, and there’s just roots. No, roots live. Many roots just will not die, so they continue to produce life. But it had to be cut down, because it had to be seen as something radically new, a new shoot, a new beginning. And what is it going to change? How is it going to change the world? It’s going to bring something called wisdom, understanding, this insight into the world as God intended it to be. It’s going to unify and bring oneness to everything, and the things that are at odds with each other, almost like the war between two sides, the war between good and evil, all of that is going to dissolve into this mysterious thing that we call truth. I’m not saying there isn’t going to be evil and there isn’t going to be a pressure that works on us that keeps us from becoming who God intends us to be. That’s a given, but the fact that, instead of struggling with our will as the core of what makes us successful in the eyes of God, meaning we can be disciplined enough to follow every rule to the letter in thinking that’s what God wants, that has to die. That has to be cut out, and a new form of fruitfulness is going to come into this tree, a new form. The old form was obedience to the law. The new form is openness to God’s presence. How different, how radical, how impossible for anyone to come up with this idea other than God had to reveal it to us.

So in the next reading in Paul is so beautiful, because he talks so clearly about the fact that this gift that we have is going to bring union and communion between all people. It’s wisdom. It’s the insight into the oneness that God has created, and then we go to John the Baptist, the figure that represents the Old Testament. And he has grown in his reputation as one who is radically against this system of laws and regulations. He’s onto something. He doesn’t quite know fully how it’s going to evolve, but he knows the old system has to die. So he’s one of those prophetic figures that almost every time they appear, they’re going to be killed. They’re going to be destroyed, because their voice is so radically different than the way the world thinks at the time they enter into it to speak to the world. And so what we see is he’s announcing what he does, and what he does is calling everybody to change. He said, “I want you all to realize that you need to repent.” One of the meanings of repentance is regret. It means see what you’re doing and know it’s not going to work. See how the law can’t really save you. No, it’s not enough, and that’s what he was aware of, and yet he didn’t quite yet fully understand who Jesus was. But he knew something. He had an instinct. He knew what Jesus was going to bring was going to be radically different, and this is the way he describes it. He said, “I’m telling you about what you need to do. I’m telling you about things you should stop doing. I’m asking you to will yourself into arranging your life in a different way so that you stop breaking laws.” But he said, “This Jesus, he’s going to come along, and with the rod of his mouth and the breath of his lips,” what interesting images. What is the rod of his mouth? It’s the truth, a radical truth that nobody could possibly conceive to be real. God is going to enter into you and bring you his Spirit, and that Spirit, that presence of God, is going to give you everything that you need in order to follow him, to receive what he wants, to become the people that the New Testament is promising we can become. And the thing I find fascinating about all this is, when you understand the promise that’s been given in this shift from Old to New Testament — and we don’t see it happening. We see still the same need for rules and laws and regulations. At least certainly authority figures feel that’s the only way to run the world. Even the church falls into that trap of feeling that the hierarchy is going to make the decisions for you, for all that you need to do. That’s not out of robbing us — it’s not the intention of the church to rob us of this gift that’s inside of us. It’s to guarantee that, if we don’t yet know that gift, we’re going to be protected. It’s like an over-protective parent who, when a child is old enough to begin to figure out what to do, they continue to tell them what to do. “Don’t do this. Don’t go to that school. Go to this school. Don’t see that person. See this other person.” It’s the same thing. How, if you’re in a position of authority, do you allow people to make their own decisions? It’s the struggle of the church. It’s the struggle of every institution, in a sense, that struggles to open human beings to what is real, what is true. That’s the challenge of this incredibly powerful season of Advent. Try to grasp the wisdom that’s being offered to human beings and understand that it’s mostly about accepting that which is given as a gift that enables you then to make decisions and that you’re able to know who you are and who God is and what we’re here for. Those are the things that I keep going back to over and over. That’s what this life is for, and the kingdom that he’s created for us, yeah, it has pain. It has suffering. It has temptations. It has mistakes and sins and serious sins and not serious sins. It has all of that, but unless we believe and really believe and are convinced that there’s this unbelievable gift inside of us that’s so often under-developed — and that’s a communication with the source of all truth, all love and all salvation.

Father, your plan is beyond our imagining. Your desire to be a part of our life, as intimate as you choose to be, is something that’s very difficult for us as human beings, especially if we’ve come from a struggle to think that, unless we are performing perfectly, we cannot be expecting you to pay attention to us, but you pay extra attention to us when we are poor, unable to succeed in what we’re called to be. So bless all of us with a greater conviction of the gift that you’ve offered so that we can drink of it and feel it in our heart, in our soul and become the people you want us to be. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.