3rd Sunday Advent A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2007

If you were God, what might you do? I remember years ago giving a retreat to a group of Year 12 students, and asking them the same question. Their answers were what you might expect from Year 12 students from a Catholic school: put a stop to wars; eliminate poverty and hunger; heal those suffering from disease and sickness. I asked them then, “Why doesn’t God do that? Does God not love this world as much as you do?”

In today’s First Reading Isaiah claims to proclaim God’s intentions for his people, Israel: The eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, the lame shall leap like the deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy … Joy and gladness shall go with them and sorrow and lament be ended.  That was two and a half thousand years ago – If anything, things have got worse.

John the Baptist had looked forward to one coming after him, one stronger than he. Jesus came – but John’s dreams did not eventuate. Mind you, as Matthew tells his story, Jesus could rightly claim: the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor. But Jesus did not forever wipe out blindness, deafness, dumbness, leprosy or paralysis.

In that brief section of his letter that we read today, St James tells his readers to be patient until the Lord’s coming. But why does the Lord not come now? Why do we have to be patient? Why wait? What is holding the Lord up?

Interestingly, as Matthew writes his Gospel, Jesus has come. He came as the suffering, persecuted Son of Man, and, indeed, with power and great glory, at his crucifixion. He came as Judge of the world, the one whose integrity graphically illustrated what was good and what was evil. After his resurrection, he came in a different way. As Matthew said, right at the end of his Gospel: Jesus came and spoke to them. He said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me… And … know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time. Indeed, the risen Jesus is with us now: I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.

If Jesus, to whom all authority in heaven and earth has already been given, is with us, why doesn’t he make a difference? why doesn’t he do something? Perhaps, the answer might be: In the things that matter, he can’t do anything unless we cooperate – freely. People will experience peace, meaning, fulfilment, only as they freely choose to love. (And does anything short of that really matter?) We in the Western world, with all our wealth, power and scientific knowledge only know peace and happiness to the extent that we love.

For God immediately to eliminate war, disease, relationship breakdowns, poverty and hunger, God would have to override our freedom and make robots of us. But, if God were to override our freedom, we would be unable to love, to grow wise, and to mature. Without freedom, we would be unable to experience deep, human happiness.

Yet, God is not powerless. God is not doing nothing. Jesus, who has returned to be with us always until the end of time, call us to love, inspires us, shows us what love is and what we are capable of being and empowers us precisely to be just that. But we have to learn to notice.

Advent is a good time for us to step back, to stop, to be counter-cultural (if we are determined enough) and to take hold once more of the commitment that God has made to our happiness. Was Isaiah speaking symbolically, perhaps, of our hearts unfolding in love, when he wrote: Let the wilderness and the dry-lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom, let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil, let it rejoice and sing for joy.