1st Sunday Advent A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

I warm so easily to Isaiah: his vision, his hope, the words and images he uses.  What stirs me tonight is his invitation – (or is it his challenge?): O House of Jacob come.  Let us walk in the light of the Lord.  Perhaps, if he were speaking to us, he would say: O disciples of Jesus come.  Let us walk in the light of Our Lord –  and then he might add: consistently, totally consistently.  The fact is “I don’t”.  There may even be, at times, an “I won’t”.  It boils down to: Do I trust God? Do I trust Jesus? If I walk in his light, always, what will happen? Does it pay off?  Isaiah spoke of God wielding his authority and establishing peace.  Can God be trusted to do that? Whatever about those people swept away by the Flood (that Jesus mentioned).  Don’t bad things happen to good people? 

What is the authority – the power – of God?  As far as we know, God’s authority, God’s power, is the power of love – only love.  When you think of it, love is the source of all true growth, of all true life.  Anything other than love does not nurture growth, but inhibits, or controls, or paralyses or destroys.  The catch with love – the catch with God’s authority and power – is that, it doesn’t control; it doesn’t restrict; it doesn’t coerce.  It certainly isn’t magic.  Somehow, it works from within human freedom.

For all God’s creative energy, all God’s infinite power, God is vulnerable.  There is paradox here.  In a sense, can vulnerability be powerful? Look at Jesus – helplessly crucified, helplessly vulnerable.  Yet it is precisely his deliberately chosen vulnerability that is so powerful – the source of all true life, the source of eternal life, the source of redemption.  It has changed me.  It still is.  And it has deeply influenced you, and is shaping you into the persons you are.

I spend so much effort trying not to be vulnerable.  Security, acceptance, comfort are strongly attractive.  Yet I know in my heart of hearts, for example, that I would prefer to be not healthy but with a sense of meaning, serenity, wisdom, and readiness to love and forgive than to be perfectly healthy but without meaning, restless, self-absorbed, resentful or empty.

In a sense, it doesn’t matter what happens, so long as God is around with the divine capacity to call forth, even in the midst of tragedy, life and wisdom and gratitude and wonder.

Isaiah was right to invite Israel to walk in the light of the Lord.  Paul was right when he said in tonight’s Second Reading: Wake up.  Jesus was right when he said: Stay awake – stay tuned, alert and responsive to the infinitely empowering, life-enabling love of God that is always there, somewhere, always accessible, whatever else is happening, or however vulnerable we may feel.  We don’t need to be in control – just more observant, perhaps, more contemplative.

The wonderful woman Julian of Norwich said it so beautifully, so long ago, when she insisted (as I have quoted before, on more than one occasion): All will be well.  All will be well.  All manner of thing will be well.  It is just that well rarely means what we expected.