2nd Sunday of Advent: Cycle C 21-22
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Baruch 5:1-9 | Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11 | Luke 3:1-6
Today we’re going to be reflecting on the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent. One of the fascinating things about the readings I just read, and not just those readings but the story of the Old Testament, the New Testament, is how powerful it is in terms of awakening human beings to who they are and who God is and why we’re here. And when you think about it, it’s really a complicated story of a people that changed from the beginning, from Adam and Eve, to their naive way in which they thought that this life that they were given by God was something that they had to — I guess it reveals human nature, but they had to experience it. They were told they had this gift of free will, and they said, “Well, I want to use my free will. I want to make my own decisions. I don’t want to be told what to do. I want to learn how to make decisions and live by them.” And that’s the whole story of that thing called the fall of the human race, the fall of Adam. It wasn’t so much a fall from grace as much as it was an awakening inside of human beings that they were here with a purpose, and the experience they wanted to have is what it’s like to be free to make decisions. Nothing else that God ever created was able to do that. And it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t have gone toward that more than anything else. “I want to be the one who comes into the world and figures it out. Give me a little autonomy,” is what they were saying indirectly, and God allowed it. God allowed them to come into the world, and then there’s this unfolding story, Old Testament, New Testament.
The God of the Old Testament is fascinating, because he seems to be at times loving and caring and, other times, extremely angry, jealous, raging. And so what we have is an evolution in the Old Testament of human beings are and how God has revealed himself. God doesn’t change. I say that to you over and over again, but he does reveal himself in ways that human beings are able to comprehend. He couldn’t have begun talking, let’s say, to Cain and Abel about forgiveness, about redemption, about dying to save someone else. There was no way the human race at that time could have comprehended any of that. So it took a long time for God to reveal who he is and what he’s about. The Old Testament is really an interesting story, because it so much focuses on what human beings are being asked to do, by God, in order to find favor with God. And what they were asked to do was really to live according to their nature, to stop doing the things they were doing, to stop the corruption, the lying, the cheating, the horrible behavior that they had for each other. Whenever they got caught up in that, whenever corruption filled them, then their enemies would overtake them, and then they would be flat on their back, in a sense, and then they’d come back. And that’s what we have in the first reading.
Remember, last week we talked about the end of the temple era, and Jerusalem was going to be destroyed by the Romans. And Jesus predicted it and told his disciples to beware, that this whole system of the Old Testament had to die, had to be replaced with something new, and the new was the mercy and the forgiveness of a God who finally was able to reach the point where human beings were able to receive something from him. And instead of giving them rules and laws and regulations and reward and punishment, he was inviting them into an intimate relationship with him. As you can imagine, the Old Testament was so much about God asking human beings to do the things they needed to do in order to please God. It’s like people trying to get to God, Old Testament. New Testament is the opposite direction. God is now coming to them. God is the one moving toward them more and more intimately, more and more personally, more and more in a way that is shocking and scandalous and even blasphemous. In the Old Testament, there would be no way that anybody, anyone would consider that God could enter into them or that God could be one with them. They were filthy, dirty, ugly. Now I’m just exaggerating, but they were not what you would call very mature. And they were so prone to those lower levels of our human nature that’s — born into self-survival and taking care of our own and taking care of just what belongs to us until finally we learn that all of the gospel is going to draw us into a place where we’re not so much focused on me, myself, mine but on others. And others, caring for others is the core of the New Testament, and that’s what God has come to teach in the person of Jesus. And the only way he could do that, the only way he could teach people to be that way would be to ask them to allow God to be that first for them. That’s the amazing part of the New Testament.
When time was right, if you look at the gospel, when the time was exactly right and people were ready to receive a message that could not possibly have been given before that moment, and John the Baptist, who had been already engaged in this longing of a transformation from the Old Testament system of sin and punishment and reward and punishment for what they did and regulation, 613 regulations guiding everyone’s life — it was a control thing. And he knew, somehow John knew the time was right, and he was going to announce something so brand new, so amazing. It’s what this whole season is about, the season of advent. Something new is coming. It’s interesting. When you think about advent and repeating something over and over again, like okay, now we’re starting again to go through another evangelist, his view of how God revealed himself through Jesus to the people, and he gives his version of it. And we contemplate it, and we wonder about it, and we want to experience the same thing. And that’s a wonderful way to imagine a new season, but at the same time, if it’s just, oh, we’d do this again, it’s not just doing it again. It’s being ready to receive something new that we’ve never received before. Unless you enter into this experience with me of examining Luke’s gospel, unless you discover something you’ve never discovered before, unless you take a risk and find something in it that makes your life so different, we’re not really engaged in this work that you and I have promised we can do for each other when we look at these readings and say we want the wisdom, we want the knowledge, we want the understanding that’s in them. We want to receive this gift that is being given, not something that we’re supposed to work for but that we have to receive. We have to — I know. We have to be passive, and that’s really difficult for an egocentric human being. Adam was expressing that human nature in all of us. “Let me go figure it out. Let me do. Let me figure out what I have to do and what I have to be, and I’ll do that. I’ll make myself into that, and when I make myself into that, I will be rewarded in some level, even if it’s just my own self-esteem that goes high when I say, “I, I, I have done this.” And Jesus comes along and said, “No. No, it’s just the opposite of that.” No, the whole mystery of this season of reflection on the readings is somehow to shift away from that Old Testament goal of achieving something for God, allowing God — in place of that, allowing God to enter into us and receiving who he is — receiving who he is. And until you can receive who he is, you can’t be who he is, and that’s the challenge of the New Testament.
And what is it that God is saying to us through Jesus? He’s saying, “Look, I want a relationship with you where I can come and enter into you and take you somewhere.” And where he wants to take us is so ridiculously weird and strange. He said, “I want to take you into the heart of God. I want you to have a relationship with God like I have a relationship with God where he lives inside of you, and you would live inside of him. He said this over and over to his disciples, and they just were totally baffled and confused by it and said, “This is such a hard saying. We don’t know what to say.” Just say to a group of people who felt that God was so great, so powerful that, if he came into your life, you’d be destroyed, and now find out there’s this God of intimacy that wants to enter into us and dwell there as we are, not, “Clean it up, fix it up, stop all the sinning, and then I’ll come to you.” That’s the Old Testament, but the New Testament is, “No, I want to come and dwell inside of you as you are, and all I want is to invite you into a place where you never imagined you could be.” But the place is, again, in the heart of God and God in you, and then what is that like? Well, Jesus would say, “If you want to know what it’s like, look at me. What I’m telling you, what the New Testament is all about, is you living a life that I have taught you to live by my living it first for you, and what you’ll see in me is not a man who is struggling only.” He struggled certainly to surrender to all the things he was asked to do, but what he’s really saying: “I want you to surrender to a world that I’m explaining to you is your destiny, your purpose for being here, and that is to have a God dwelling inside of you, resonating out of your life for other people.” That’s your core, and that it not dependent upon your performance in terms of whether you’re sinning or not sinning, unless the sin that you’re committing is resistance, complete, “I will not give in to this. I will be in charge of everything that is good that comes out of me. It’s going to be out of my will, my desires, my talent.” God, we’re so addicted to that kind of sense of value in who we are by what we do or how we perform, and that’s not what it’s about. It’s about being a receiver of a gift that is beyond our imagining and letting that gift flow from us to someone else.
That’s an adventure, an adventure of letting go of ego and will and mind and opening up heart, opening up a heart that is so effective and so powerful in terms of its ability to change the world, but you would think that would be an easy thing. “Okay, if you’re going to do something with me, through me, and all I have to do is surrender to that, that should be easier than trying to do it myself.” Well, that’s not the way human nature is designed initially, and it needs to be transformed. And so the only way it can happen is that God has to change you, and this is the most bizarre part of it. He won’t do that unless you say yes, unless you say, “Okay, I’ll stop being the one in charge. I’ll stop being the one in control. I’ll stop being the one who is making it all happen. I’ll let you enter into me and do something new.” That’s not as easy as I may have just made it sound, because I have been trying that for 81 years, and I still can’t do it. It’s still hard to think about me not being the source of these words that I’m saying to you, that I’m the one that’s making these words make sense, and you’re going to be thankful that I did my homework, and I made this homily work for you. And then that’s what I should leave this station with, since I did something wonderful for those people, and I don’t have that anymore. At least it’s not as strong as it was, and maybe it’s finally dying, where I can come in here and say, “I have no idea what I’m going to say,” and then let you speak through me. And that is so hard, so hard. Hard to walk into a situation where somebody needs you and you don’t have anything to say, and you say, “Just use me. Just use me.” And even if you — it may not even be words that he uses. It’s a whole different world, and that’s the adventure, to come into that new world, that new place of surrender, acceptance, of a new life that is only given, never achieved. So I hope these words have been helpful, and now I want to turn to God and ask him to bless you as I ask him to bless me.
Father, humanity is a great mystery. You made us, in a sense, so autonomous and so separate. At the same time, we’re like little children longing for you, longing for your Spirit inside of us, knowing on some deep, deep level that we’re not enough. But to feel we’re not enough is terrifying to the ego and to the will, so bless us with humility, with the ability to sense your patience with us as we struggle with this. And most especially I ask you to bless this work that this program has given to me to work and to find new people and have a relationship with them that I believe is going to be powerful for me and for them. So bless this ministry of mine that is now going through some kind of change that I don’t fully understand, but I pray it will be effective and life-giving. So thank you, God, for your gift of life. Amen.