Homily: 2nd Sunday of Advent (A)
Mt. 3: 1-12
Advent as a liturgical season always seems to me to be a little counter-intuitive. Whilst its
purpose and origins are very obvious – a season of repentance and expectation in
preparation for the coming feast of the Nativity, a season which is “parallel” to the season of
Lent in preparation for Easter – its theology and celebration are, at least to me, a little odd.
Let me try to explain a little about what I mean.
Lent, the parallel to Advent, seems to have a sense of direction. We start very clearly with
Ash Wednesday, which sets the tone for the whole season, and then we seem to progress
almost logically in the Sunday Gospels through episodes in Jesus’ life which lead towards the
“ultimate showdown” between him and the Jewish leaders. From Palm Sunday onwards, we
“relive” in some sense the last few days of the Lord’s life alongside him in what one might
term a “liturgical re-enactment” of the events of the Passion and Resurrection. It all seems
clear and logical. The problem is that Advent is different.
In a sense, Advent is different because we have to read the Sunday Gospels “the wrong way
round” as it were, as we progress through the season. At the Feast of Christ the King, with
which we close each year, we acknowledge Jesus as the supreme Lord of the Universe, the
supreme Judge because of his saving death on the Cross. Then, as we begin again on the 1st
Sunday of Advent each year, we hear one of the “eschatological parables” – acknowledging
that this same Jesus will come again to be our judge, and that we must “Stay awake and
stand ready, because we do not know the day or the hour when the master is coming” – as
come we believe He will. In the 2nd and 3rd Sundays each year, the figure of John the Baptist
appears, heralding the Lord’s coming, proclaiming the Kingdom as “forerunner” before the
beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Only in the 4th Sunday do we start to hear any of the
Infancy Narratives, the stories we think of as the “Christmas story”. It is as though we are
“travelling backwards in time” – narrowing the focus each Sunday from the universal to the
particular, from the consequences of the events to the events themselves. Perhaps I’m just
a literal-minded scientist, or perhaps I just got too used to hearing the Infancy Narratives
strung together in sequence at the many hundreds of Carol Services that I have attended
over the years since I was a boy-chorister, but this “looking backwards while time moves
forward” has always been slightly uncomfortable. I find myself asking how I can prepare for
a feast in the future when I am looking backwards down the liturgical telescope.
But perhaps that is precisely the point. I suspect that it would be very easy for us to get
completely wrapped up in the “schmaltzy” side of the Christmas story if our liturgies in
Advent concentrated solely on the historical narrative leading to the Nativity. It might lead
us to the same sort of liturgical approach once described to my community by an American
Abbot – who told us of a church in New York where, at the elevation of the Host during
Midnight Mass each year, a “bambino” descended from the gallery on a zip wire and landed
in a crib at the foot of the altar, with much fanfare and cries of “At last, Jesus is here!”
Whilst we probably all recognise that this is complete nonsense, nonetheless, it would not
be too difficult for us too to live Advent as though Jesus had not yet come – as in the words
of the Advent hymn: So let us each our hearts prepare/for Christ to come and enter there –
as if he had not already come, as if he were not present with us now, as if he were not
already present in our hearts. If we do live Advent like that, I suspect Christmas will bring us
only disappointment, since we will be looking for Jesus in the wrong place, still trapped in
the crib.
If we can accept that Christ is the incarnate Son of God, not only incarnate for us in history
but already incarnate within us – since we are members of His mystical Body – then perhaps
we can hear the readings of today’s Mass in a new way. Perhaps we could ask ourselves that
question which John asked the Scribes and Pharisees – are we bearing the fruit appropriate
to Christ’s indwelling of us? What in our daily lives is the “good wheat” which needs to be
stored and nurtured to yield a greater harvest in the future? What in our lives is chaff that
needs to be winnowed and burned away? Or we could reflect with Paul. Does our treatment
of each other reflect what Christ has already done for us? Are we united in mind and voice
in giving glory to God for us work in our lives? Does our inheritance of the promises made
through the Patriarchs make our lives stand out in our society, so that the “pagans” amongst
whom we live can recognise that Christ has made a difference to us – and perhaps lead even
them to ask Why? Who is this Christ? and so give some glory to God.
Lastly, perhaps we could ask ourselves how deeply we set our hope in that shoot from the
stock of Jesse, that is Jesus Christ. How much do we – who share his Spirit – follow him in his
path of righteousness and justice? How much do we judge by appearances, delight in gossip
and hearsay? How much do we reach out to ensure that the poor are treated with integrity
and justice? Isaiah paints for us an image of the Messianic kingdom as a new Eden, a new
garden where the wild beasts behave as they did before the Fall, before our sin damaged
ourselves and our Creation. I wonder how much we do to bring that prophetic vision to
reality, empowered by the Spirit within us – how much we are filled with the knowledge of
the Lord, through our prayer and our reading of the scriptures, a knowledge that will allow
us to work towards the day when we can truly say with voice and heart: Thy Kingdom come.
Or are we, perhaps, just too comfortable where we are to want that coming kingdom?
Perhaps then, there is still a work of preparation for us this Advent. Not a preparation to fill
the emptiness, but a preparation to receive still more of the fullness with which we have
already been blessed. Perhaps there is still a necessary time of repentance – not a
repentance based on fear of future punishment for our sinfulness, but a repentance based
on love and wonder and joy at what Christ has already done for us, a wonder and a joy
which will set our hearts aflame with a deeper love for the Christ who longs to come to us,
whose sole desire is to be Emmanuel – “God-with-us”. May God, who each year begins this
great work in us anew, bring it to a speedy fulfilment in the day of Christ Jesus. Amen.