John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). 2nd Sunday of Advent, Cycle B December 4 th, 2011
First Reading: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11 Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins. A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. Go up on to a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by his strong arm; here is his reward with him, his recompense before him. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care. Responsorial Psalm Ps 85:9-10-11-12, 13-14 Lector: I will hear what God proclaims; the LORD? for he proclaims peace to his people. Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him, glory dwelling in our land.
All: Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. Lector: Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven. All: Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. Lector: The LORD himself will give his benefits; our land shall yield its increase. Justice shall walk before him, and prepare the way of his steps. All: Lord, let us see your kindness, and grant us your salvation. Second Reading: 2 Peter 3:8-14 Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard "delay," but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out. Since everything is to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be, conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace.
Gospel Reading: Mark 1:1-8 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. A voice of one crying out in the desert: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths." John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins. John was clothed in camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He fed on locusts and wild honey. And this is what he proclaimed: "One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Homily: Last week, we joyfully lit the first Advent candle, and we talked about it as representative of expectation or hope, or in some traditions, prophecy of the coming Savior. This candle draws attention to the anticipation of the coming of a Messiah that weaves its way like a golden thread through Hebrew history, with many weak, flawed kings, prophets, religious leaders; yet God will not leave his people without the true Shepherd who will bring God s new work in creation. Today, we light the second candle which represents the history of salvation -- God working in history -- freeing, choosing, loving and saving people in specific times and places. Advent is much more than preparation for celebration of the nativity. Advent invites us to prepare again for the coming of the reign of God in our lives. This Sunday s Gospel looks back to John, the Baptizer, setting the stage for Jesus. He called for repentance and baptism. We could continue like the Hebrew people when they were in exile, and some of them were said to have been loathe to pull up stakes and return to their homeland. We, like them, may be ambivalent about our direction and our
priorities. But there was one whose voice cried out, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Today, we look at the process of conversion as it was understood biblically and how it has been understood for two millennia before the protestant reformers began to shape a different view. I want to share with you a universal catholic view of the conversion process. Our journey is a series of progressions, regressions, and dead ends too, lived out in a community of faith. We are born again many times -- not just once -- through an ongoing process of conversion re-turning. The notion of a once-saved is not consistent with our real life experiences. I walked the aisle in a small Southern Baptist Church at age seven. Some questioned me or my parents: Does she know what she is doing? She knew about as well as any seven year old, I suppose. But if our profession of faith is the same as it was at age seven or ten, then we are frozen in time and not living a faith that is adequate for a 25 year old, a 65 year old, an 85 year old. And from a sacramental tradition, our paths will be marked by sacramental signs bringing us a window into God s grace at the different stages of our lives. We have sacraments and a liturgical year to celebrate which provides us with a link to our communities and to nourish our unfolding metanoia, our stages of greater spiritual awareness. The Greek term for conversion, metanoia, means afterthought or thoughts about one s knowledge, and a changing of one s mind giving up being self-made after we meet Jesus Christ and come under his grace. There is a dying to ourselves and a new awakening, to discover life as wonder and a celebration of the mystery of God s grace in a shared community. Daily conversion means believing more and more in God s love, trusting in the love, living in this love. I am not there yet; I m on the way. Daily I need to grow. But I experience inclinations toward wrongfulness so I must struggle to follow Jesus perfect love. I need grace of the Spirit to overcome evil and make good choices. Advent is a time to prepare to receive Christ anew. In the readings this week, our anticipatory joy is heightened. The occasion of the passage from Isaiah was the release of Israel from the Babylonian Exile. In Ezra 1, this event is attributed to a decree of Cyrus, King of Persia, but the prophet says the decree came from Yahweh s heavenly council. The idea of a heavenly council was widespread in the ancient world based on the assumption that God would have a royal court like any other great king. An earlier decree in Isaiah 6 depicted judgment on Israel while the one here is one of consolation to God s people as a whole. The prophet is presenting his anticipation of the future as a typology. In a typology, the idea is that history repeats itself, and that because God is true to his own purposes, his mighty acts follow a consistent pattern revealing His glory. This idea from the prophets carries over into the New Testament. The word, glory, is a term with great significance, depicting an active, mighty presence of YHWH. Metaphorically, we enter Advent awaiting release from the exile brought about by our sense of separation, with Babylon symbolizing a state of mental confusion in which our thoughts are so strong that they seem to hold us in subjugation, a state akin to the captivity of the Jews. The path we travel is rock and boulder-strewn like the Israeli
landscape, at places rough and impassable and pocked with holes. The rugged road is described as in need of being made straight, a rough desert wasteland in need of being made plain. In seeking to discover a more complete interpretation we find the word aqab [H6121] 1 crooked, which may also be interpreted as: deceitful, sly, insidious, polluted, foot-tracked, steep, or hilly. Indeed, the path which humanity traveled before the coming of the Son of God was treacherous because our primitive ancestors perceived God as capricious and vengeful. But, when known through God s Son, we encounter the light and radiant warmth that envelops us as we expose our true inner selves to him to be healed. He feeds and nourishes us, dispelling our fears, and is our constant companion for the journey. He surprises and delights as he comes to us in the midst of our darkness. A thief or false teacher may also come in the midst of night if we are not constantly seeking for the Christ s presence, so the need for attentiveness to discerning the difference is what is implied here. It is in the night when work ceases that we let down our guard, or at the time of death or in times of moral stupidity, shame, or when we fall into spiritual narcosis. John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus. In saying he was not worthy to unfasten Jesus sandals, he s admitting to his insufficiency to set us free or to bring forth the Christ on his own. We are meant to take his example in admitting that neither do we have the power to perfect ourselves. The Righteous King will come - reordering events and making a perfect place in which God may dwell in us. In this time in the Advent season, we wait, keeping vigil with John, having received the baptism of water. But with Jesus arrival the time of baptism in the Holy Spirit will ensue. In attempting to prepare ourselves he enables us to participate in the kingdom here and now. Today! This requires examination of how we think, feel, and act in order to leave old feelings and the sense of being isolated in our own thoughts behind. As Christmas approaches many people revisit old feelings and losses, times of frustration, disappointments, and some may anticipate pain revisited that would surely make the season disappointing. Advent is a season in which we are meant to allow ourselves the time to move beyond the past in order to pass from death to life. John invites us to renew our spiritual initiation through remembering our baptism in order for a permanent change to take place in our spiritual lives. We are undertaking an incremental process to change our old human nature, becoming more open to living more fully in the Spirit through a process of letting go of egotism and error, making way for the Christ Child to enter in. John the Baptist calls out to us to repent. The Greek word μετάνοια [G3341], metanoia, literally means to turn, to changing one s mind, renounce a purpose previously formed 1 References to Strong s Hebrew or Greek dictionaries with biblical words are numbered, so that those who want to go further can look up the words.
or something one has done. Its larger meaning implies knowledge above knowledge [meta-knowledge]. Through the Holy Spirit, we receive knowledge of ourselves. That conscious knowledge is beyond what might have previously been intolerable knowledge. If we have been unable to allow ourselves to know what only the Holy Spirit can help bring to awareness, we are opening to allow the Spirit to permeate our being, coming into the presence of Loving Reality. Do you remember when you were a child and turning round and round till you got dizzy and fell down? Children do this to sense the euphoria of a different state of being and they don t seem to mind falling down and holding onto the feeling until it passes as equilibrium is regained. As we matured, dancing lessons may have taught some of us to spot with each revolution so as not to succumb to dizziness. Though repentance is as simple as turning around, Jesus has assured us that we have a way to spot our turns in the process of reconciliation so as not to lose spiritual equilibrium as we come face to face with unembellished truth about ourselves a knowledge we can scarcely tolerate but for the loving gift of Jesus to us. We too can become joyful, leaving the weight of our past errors behind! Christ is coming into our midst as we allow his presence. As we confess our sins we can look at ourselves and our thoughts in a new way; we are more able to see how we missed the mark and to be gentle with ourselves as Jesus is gentle with us. In this we can joyfully acknowledge, celebrate, and give praise to God for our new life. We turn and choose to act in the light of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So, Advent is a time in which we begin to celebrate the dawning of new or growing awareness, consciousness of Christ coming to dwell within the blessing of a Savior who relieves us of the pain of having missed the mark. Let us prepare the way to bring the gift of the Good News to others, not just in material gifts, but gifts of kindness, times of newly unburdened intimacies and true sharing, and being authentically available to others to mirror God s gift to us. We are preparing a place within, a cleansed vessel in which to receive Christ. Let us turn and ready our selves to bring His compassion to the world. We know not the hour or the time of the completion of Christ s work, and we await his coming again to renew us. We long for completion of peace, justice, hope and love in our world which only He can bring.
Passages steep, mountains craggy; paths rugged, packed with potholes, or sometimes cool trails with running streams. Whether tough roads or easy streets, let us never stop watching for you, O Lord. Call to us. Come to us. Show your face in everyone we meet along the Way. O God, for you a thousand years seem like a day. And one day is as long as a thousand years
Which day will you come again? Please do not delay. Come into our hearts. *** Now. Be grace from moment to moment. Grace and peace. Copyright 2011, Anne Osdieck. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce for personal or parish use.