Homily: 3rd Sunday of Advent – Cycle A
Is
it Christmas? No. There, I’ve just given you every small detail
of the website whose sole purpose seems to be to answer that question. The website’s address is isitchristmas.com
and when you go to the site all that you see is a big fat NO in your face. I’m not sure what happens on that website on
Christmas, but my guess is that it’ll either say “Yes”, which is boring, or it
will invade my computer with a virus, rob my identity, and cause my computer to
self-destruct, which would be much more exciting, for sure, but not the kind of
exciting that I’m looking for.
You
know that we’re a little bit crazy about Christmas when there are websites
whose sole purpose is to remind us that it isn’t Christmas yet. And I think that this is a sign that,
frankly, we just don’t get it. Every
year, it seems, we demonstrate that we are so impatient for our self-indulgent
winter holiday celebrations that we can’t wait even the three to four weeks of
Advent before we start indulging. I
intentionally use the phrase “winter holiday” here because, at least in my
experience, these almost never have anything to do with Christ and his coming
among us in our human nature (except, perhaps, as a “pious excuse” for having
them). The fact that “winter holiday”
decorations come down on December 26th is evidence enough that our
celebrations were over long before the event itself arrived.
You
may call me “Scrooge” for thinking like this, but I tell you this comes from a
deep place of concern. You see, I’ve
read the Scriptures (it’s kind of a necessity of this vocation) and I’ve read
about what happens to folks who give up on waiting for God. Let’s go back to the book of Exodus. There, in chapter 24, God calls Moses up onto
Mount Sinai (the mountain of the covenant) in order to give him the Ten
Commandments. Moses goes up and spends
40 days and 40 nights on the mountain.
Then,
we hear that the people got anxious waiting for Moses to return and so demand
that Aaron (Moses’ brother and the guy who was left in charge while Moses was
gone) build them an idol to worship.
Aaron ceded to their demands and fashioned a golden calf before which
the Israelites bowed in worship and then feasted: eating and drinking in excess
and otherwise celebrating with great revelry long before Moses returned with
the Ten Commandments. God alerted Moses
to this and said that he would slay them right then and there. Moses intervened, however, and God
relented. Moses then went down the mountain
to find what God had described and himself became enraged. He called forth the Israelites who had not
worshiped the idol nor had engaged in revelry and had them punish those who had
done those things by putting them to death.
The passage ends with this somber verse: “Thus the Lord smote the people
for having had Aaron make the calf for them.”
The Israelites refused to wait and instead gave into self-indulgence:
for this they were severely punished.
Advent,
my brothers and sisters, reminds us that we are in a time of waiting, and that
this waiting is not aimless; rather, we are waiting the return of Jesus. And not just Jesus our friend who has been
away for a while (as joyous as that homecoming would be), but Jesus, our King,
who will come with judgment and to usher in the fullness of his kingdom in
which right order is finally reestablished through all of creation. Those who are found in faithful preparation
will be like the sheep Jesus describes in the parable of Matthew 25, to whom he
says “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world.”
To those who are found to have given up on waiting, that is, to have
given up on their faithful preparation for his coming, the King will say, “Depart
from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his
angels.” I hope now that you can see why
I am so concerned that we have given up on waiting.
In
the Letter from Saint James, from which we heard in the second reading, he instructs
us: “Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord... Make
your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand... Behold, the
Judge is standing before the gates. Take as an example of hardship and patience
… the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” Saint James is exhorting us not to give up on
waiting, because our King’s advent, that is, his coming, is
closer than we think. Friends, by
dutifully waiting to celebrate until the day of the Nativity of Christ,
December 25th, we remind ourselves that we must dutifully wait and
prepare for Christ our King’s imminent return.
We do this both internally, by repenting of our sins and turning again
to the Way that Christ has shown us, and externally, by doing the works of mercy
and, thus, producing the signs that the King who is to come has indeed already
come. Friends, everything else is
secondary.
In
our Gospel reading today, we heard how John the Baptist, imprisoned by King
Herod, sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or
should we look for another?” Jesus, with
great love for his dear relative and friend, sends them back with this
instruction: “Go and tell John what you hear and see...” that is, that the signs
of the Messiah of which Isaiah prophesied—blind who now see, lame who now walk,
lepers who are cleansed, deaf who now hear, and the dead who now live—these
were now happening through him.
If
someone asked any of us today: "Is Jesus the one who was to come, or
should we look for another?" what would we say? Could we say, "Yes! Look, the blind see,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised"? Perhaps you might say,
“No, but Jesus isn’t here with us to make those things happen.” True, but didn’t Jesus say to his disciples,
“Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones
than these”? My friends, we must say
"yes", that Jesus is the one who was to come, but we must also
manifest the works of the kingdom, that is, the works of mercy, among us so as
to declare that he is still to come again.
Otherwise, even the John the Baptists of the world—that is, persons of
great faith—may give into doubt and fall away before the time of his coming.
You
know, the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist, the apostle James, and those of
their time never asked the question “Is it Christmas?” They, rather, were concerned with a greater
question: “Is it Advent?” In
other words, “Is it the Coming of the one who is to come?” For the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist
the answer would have been a single “Yes”, for they would not live to look for
the second coming (in this world, anyway).
For the apostle James, however, and for every Christian for the last
2000 years, the answer is “Yes and yes”: meaning, “Yes, the one for whom we
looked to come has come” and “Yes, it is he for whom we are preparing to come
again”.
My
brothers and sisters, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus our King
that we encounter in the form of bread and wine from this altar is the bridge
between these two “yeses”. As we
encounter Him today in this Mass, let us ask for the strength to wait and to
faithfully prepare for his second coming, so that we might be welcomed into the
fullness of His kingdom to rejoice with Mary and the saints for all eternity.
Given at Saint Mary’s
Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – December 14th & 15th, 2019
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