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Second Sunday of Advent Year A
December 8, 2013
Church of Saint Ignatius, Chestnut Hill MA
Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J.
I am sure that many of you, during these past few days, have been
recalling the 2009 film Invictus, which depicts a real-life event in the
history of South Africa. I came across an article in the Los Angeles Times,
one of the countless media reports prompted by the death of Nelson
Mandela. It reads:
When President Nelson Mandela strode onto the field at the final
of the 1995 Rugby World Cup wearing the shirt of the largely
white national team, the entire stadium appeared to catch its
breath. To millions of black South Africans, the green shirt with its
springbok emblem had come to embody all the pain and
indignities of decades of white rule. But with that one gesture,
Mandela reassured the sport's largely white fans, many of whom
had thought of him as a terrorist, that they too had a place in the
new South Africa. A chant rose from the stands, difficult to make
out at first, then filling the stadium: "Nelson. Nelson. Nelson."1
Nelson Mandela was a remarkable world figure whose
determination and grit brought to the world’s attention both the
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-nelsonmandela-springboks-20131206,0,5676387.story#ixzz2mtIaZXaT
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inhumanity of apartheid, and a vision of how the world could be.
Isaiah also had a vision, a new ecology of the reign of the Messiah,
where there shall be no harm or ruin. And in that new ecology the wolf
shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to
guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their
young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by
the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.
This is but one example of the poetry of the prophets during these
days of Advent, poetry that paints a vivid picture of the world as it could
be, a picture of the would as it should be. The poetry of the prophets
communicates God’s dream for humanity.
But before we get carried away by Isaiah’s utopian menagerie,
let’s be mindful that the things described here simply are not so:
Wolves still devour lambs, leopards still pounce on their prey, bears and
cows do not eat side-by-side, lions are not vegans, venomous snakes still
strike, and innocent children still need to be sheltered and protected
from predators.
And Mandela’s dream? The article from the Los Angeles Times
continues:
Watching those euphoric scenes in the film Invictus, when South
Africans of all races poured into the streets to celebrate the
Springbok national rugby team's eventual triumph, it would be
easy to believe that this was "the game that made a nation." Yet
fifteen years later, the country remains in many ways racially
divided. Impoverished blacks continue to live packed into third-
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world townships on the edge of modern cities, where the best
neighborhoods are mostly white. Many of them now complain
that too much time has been spent allaying white fears and too
little reversing the injustices of white rule.
And sadly, a 2012 census in South Africa revealed that the median
income for whites was over six times that of blacks.
As we feast on the poetry of the prophets, are we carried away by
a fanciful vision of a universe that has never existed? Are we duped by
this vision of a new world, a world of justice and integrity, a world of
reconciliation and harmony, a world where hatred is quenched by
mercy, where vengeance gives way to forgiveness, and where nations
seek the way of peace together? How do we square this vision with the
harsh reality of the world as it is? As one trained in social science
methodologies as well as theology, I can posit that original sin is the one
theological concept for which there is ample empirical evidence. My
friends, we have a long way to go to make God’s dream a reality.
And so, as we continue on our Advent journey, we hear John the
Baptist preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Advent is a time of repentance, when we
acknowledge our sinfulness as we prepare once again to celebrate the
coming of the Messiah. We acknowledge ways in which each of us, by
what we do and by what we fail to do, inhibit the coming of the kingdom
of heaven. Advent is also a time of hope when, rejecting cynicism, we do
not let the harsh realities of the present overshadow the possibilities for
the future, when we attend to the vision of the ancient sages like Isaiah
or the contemporary sages like Mandela. And Advent is a time of
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prayer, when we take time to turn to God and echo the words of the
quintessential Advent hymn, “O come, desire of nations, bind
in one the
hearts of all humankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
and be
Thyself our King of Peace.”