My Christmas Wish for God

 I love the season of Advent and I try to “keep it” as a time of preparation, doing what I can not to celebrate Christmas before it gets here. But with the whole world “going Christmas” all around me
– it’s not easy –  and sometimes, I just give in! 

“God, Jr.?” Not, Even

If God named Jesus “God, Jr.” to have him only mimic his Father then Jesus would be a puppet, and we’d all be God’s puppets and completely fooled. Jesus had to uncover his own, unique personhood, or else this whole religion thing would have collapsed. Jesus needed to complete the same life task that is given to us all…

John is not a junior. His last name says his occupation. Baptist. (Does that make me “Joe the Priest?”) John paves the way, pours the concrete, smooths it over carefully, and welcomes the one whom he knew he was not, whose Allen Edmunds shoes he can’t afford to wear. But before his headless exit, he commissions the top billing star by baptizing him. The lesser baptizes, the greater. The greater cannot do what “great” means without the lessor’s anointing. Go figure. John freely sends Jesus to be who he is and do what he needs to do, without the “junior” stuff. Can we do any less with those we love, work with, or those we simply encounter? Be less for them to be more in the eyes of God.

The Voice from the Stable

Both the words of John the Baptist and the words of Advent call us to listen.  To listen for the Good News, to listen for the voice from the stable.  You and I believe that Jesus Christ was born in a stable, lived his life, died and rose again as our risen Lord.  We believe that he is still with us.  We believe that if we listen, we can hear his voice.  We might hear it in the innocence of children, or in the faithfulness of a friend, or in the goodness of our spouse, or in the kindness of a co-worker.  We might hear good news in a ministry that we engage in as part of a Christmas project here at St. Noel, or in generosity from a stranger, or in the beauty of the snow, or in the stillness of our hearts.

RELATED HOMILIES

• A Banquet of Locusts and Honey
• The Virtue of Deference
• Keeping God Off Your List
• Attire for the Kingdom
• Camels and Gnats
• Comfort with a Condition

Comfort

“Comfort, comfort my people.” The prophet of the first reading is told that the time of misery is coming to an end. Comfort the people. Let them know that God is going to come to free them from their sadness and their pain.

Right now, we need comforting. We are living in very difficult times. Politics has polarized us. People don’t just disagree with each other, they show anger and even hatred towards those who hold a different opinion then they do. Some Republicans shout out that all Democrats are communists. Some Democrats shout out that all Republicans are fascists.

Our Church is also divided between those who want a return to a traditionalist faith where Mass is celebrated in Latin and those who want the Church to continue developing with the times. Deeper than that, there are those who treat the Holy Father as a heretic, and those who treat anyone who questions Rome as being a schismatic. This is very stressful for us all.

Note four aspects of the second reading:

Clergy E-Notes

“…if the family is the sanctuary of life, the place where life is conceived and cared for, it is a horrendous contradiction when it becomes a place where life is rejected and destroyed. So great is the value of a human life, and so inalienable the right to life of an innocent child growing in the mother’s womb, that no alleged right to one’s own body can justify a decision to terminate that life, which is an end in itself and which can never be considered the “property” of another human being.”

— Pope Francis

Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable

One thing I learned in seminary was that as a preacher of God’s Word, my role is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable:

1.) To help those who have it bad and to get those who have it good to start thinking of others;
2.) To forgive the repentant and challenge the complacent; and
3.) To preach Good News of hope to the oppressed and fear of hell to their oppressors — to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

True vs False Comfort

Bottom line: God offers us true comfort. Not the false comfort of denying sin, but the acceptance of personal responsibility and divine forgiveness.

In our reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear, Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. For some this will invoke Handel’s Messiah, Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people…Saith your God

We need a message of comfort after the devastation we have been through this year. On top of the worldwide pandemic other forms of devastation have come upon many people. 

God offers us comfort, but it is not a false or easy comfort. C.S. Lewis said this, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”

Longing for God

Advent. Longing for God. The Church gives us one entire season to get more in touch with our need for more of God in our lives. In our innermost depths, we have within us a longing for God that can be satisfied only by God. Every time we pray, we answer that need for more of God in our lives. Many of the Psalms (e.g. Ps 63) help us get in touch with that longing for God deep within us. Church architecture, especially the soaring Gothic cathedrals, spreading from northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, give expression to this longing for God deep within us. The masterpieces of art also express this longing for God. For centuries, the palette that artists used for painting was the Bible. This longing for God leaked into everyday speech. In Gaelic, you greet someone “Hello” by saying, “Dia Dhuit” which means “God be with you.” The response is “Dia’s Muire dhuit.” “God and Our Lady be with you” or “Dia’s Muire dhuit agus Pádraig,” “God and Our Lady be with you and Patrick!”

Wastelands of Discontent

It is the despair of exile—from one’s homeland and one’s self—that is addressed in Second Isaiah’s “Book of Consolation.” And if the prophet has a living word, it speaks not only to a people over twenty-five centuries ago. It confronts us. This is what it means to appropriate holy scripture as our own: not a disembodied historical text, but a message that penetrates our own reality.

Certainly this encounter is appropriate for a community of faith bearing the very name of the Word made flesh and inhabiting countries whose national spirits were once influenced by the God of Moses and the prophets as well as the Father of Jesus.

We let voices cry out in our own wastelands: Isaiah calling us to prepare a way for the Lord, the writer of 2 Peter asking us to come to repentance, John the Baptizer proclaiming “a baptism which led to the forgiveness of sins” (Second Reading).

A Season of Hope

Our first reading from Isaiah begins, “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.” As I shared with you last week, Isaiah is writing during the time of the Babylonian Exile. The Jews were a conquered people exiled to a foreign land. And yet, Isaiah begins our reading this Sunday with, “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.” What kind of comfort could possibly be beneficial to his countrymen during those awful times? It wasn’t resignation. It wasn’t self-medication. It wasn’t surrender. What is the comfort Isaiah is referring to? Hope. The comfort he is referring to is hope. For Isaiah, that hope is a voice crying out in the desert saying prepare the way for the Lord.