3rd Sunday in Advent
December 15, 2013
4 PM & 10 AM Liturgies
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Our most unlikely herald of the Christmas season returns to
center stage in today’s gospel, John the Baptist. The reason John is
such an “unlikely” herald is both troubling to some and consoling
to others.
He is troubling because he is such a strange bird! We heard
in last week’s gospel that he lived alone in a desert, wore shaggy
clothes, and had questionable dietary habits. He also seemed last
week to be suffering from at least a bit of an anti-social personality
disorder. After all, not many people confronting religious
authorities for the first time refuse to say a simple, “Hello,” but
rather greet them by calling them, “You brood of vipers.” At the
very least, John missed his Dale Carnegie course! He is not about to
win friends!
It is troubling that John is also one of the most “edgy”
characters in all the gospels. He is the ultimate “fringe” person.
You may remember that I’ve said to some of you before that I’ve
always wanted to give John a Christmas present I saw in a window
in Provincetown a few years ago. It was a tee shirt with a beautiful
photo of the earth taken from space and said underneath: “If
you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”
That’s John!
But it is equally troubling to some that this also seems to be
the exhortation to all of us from our new Pope. There are many
who wish he would stop saying that he wants a messy church, that
he wants a poor church, that he wants us all—especially his
bishops and priests—out on the frontiers, at the boundaries, on the
edge. Can he be serious? Is John the Baptist one of Pope Francis’
hidden heroes? That’s not just troubling to some people; it’s
downright scary!
But today’s picture of John can also be very consoling. Last
week he was all spitfire. Today he sits more forlorn and more tired
and in prison awaiting a sure death. And he struggles with what
sound like doubts. John wonders whether it’s all been real.
Whether it’s all been worth it. Whether his impending death will
have made any difference.
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So he sends some friends to the “one whose sandals he knows
he is not worthy to carry” to ask “are you the One?” Are you really
the One? He wants to know before he dies.
John has been looking for the signs of the coming reign of God
all his life. Is this Jesus really the sign? Do these questions sound
at all familiar to you? Do they resonate in your own experience of
faith? Jesus himself calls John “more than an prophet,” and “the
greatest man ever born of a woman.” Does it touch your heart to
know even he has his doubts?
As the great Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich once said:
“Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” Or as
the novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky phrased it: “It is not as a child
that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a
furnace of doubt.” Perhaps the most blunt assertion along these
lines comes from a great Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno:
“Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.”
John asks hard questions. And Jesus answers. And Jesus
deftly brings together Isaiah from the past, himself in the present,
and the dream of the future. He says to John’s friends, “Go and tell
John what you see.” The signs of the coming reign of God are the
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same as they have always been and always will be. And they are
not the usual signs of Christmas, are they? The real signs are not
only about a tiny baby in a manger. They are not only about softly
falling snow in a star-lit heaven. They are not only about singing
angels and sleepy shepherds.
Jesus knows the real signs of God’s reign, the reign that
dawns at Christmas. Isaiah foretold it: The blind regain their sight.
The lame walk. Lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are
raised. And the poor have good news proclaimed to them. This is
all hard work! It is hard—even for God—to make all things right in
this world. It is consoling to know that God will make things right!
St. James urges us this morning to be patient. But he does not
urge us to be passive. Advent is an invitation. And it is not just an
invitation to savor the lights of the season. It is an invitation to
actively help dispel the darkness in our worlds. The invitation is to
dispel darkness in our own hearts and in our world. It’s hard
work.
We too will know, like John, that the Light of the World is
arriving when we create, and nourish, and celebrate the signs of
God’s reign in us. When the blindness all around us and in us is
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receding. When the crippled in our lives (whether crippled
physically, or emotionally, or spiritually) are again stretching,
standing, and even walking again. When the lepers in our church
and in our cultures are again welcomed to the table with
graciousness and with warmth. When the dead and dying in our
midst see a glimmer of the Light. And we will know most assuredly
that Christmas is here when the poor, the poor in so many different
ways, hear nothing but good news because of us.
John the Baptist will always be both troubling and consoling
for us. Because from the edges, and with his doubts, John
personifies God’s invitation to the Kingdom. But it is only an
invitation. The world still awaits our response. Peace!
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