3rd Sunday Advent A - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2016

John the Baptist’s situation in prison reminds me of that of the Asylum Seekers in detention in Nauru – innocent of any crime but facing an uncertain and dangerous future. Would Herod kill him? Did he have any chance of release? Or would he simply be let rot in prison indefinitely? Like so many in Nauru, John lapsed into depression. In that state he started even to wonder if he had been mistaken in his identifying Jesus as the one who would usher in the reign of God. “Are you the one to come, or have we got to wait for another?” John had, after all, looked forward to a “stronger one”, a vigourous reformer whose “axe” was already “laid to the roots of the tree”, who would “clear his threshing floor” of chaff and burn it – another culture warrior, somewhat like himself.

In some respects, John’s question was the question we all would do well to confront. “How do we recognize God? and how do we identify the signs of the presence of God’s reign”. Jesus’ answer was clear. He immediately proceeded to quote from Isaiah, listing what both Isaiah and he saw as signs of the presence of God’s reign: “the blind see again, and 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”. It was not that John was unaware of these things happening. Matthew had mentioned explicitly “John in his prison had heard what Christ was doing.” John’s problem was that he did not recognise those things as signs of the presence of God or of God’s reign.

Matthew had summarized John’s message as “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is close at hand”. Perhaps we could say that John’s repentance [or personal change] had not gone far enough. He had understood repentance/development as the strengthening of the will, as bringing our lives into order by having the will in control of our spontaneous desires and fears, by having a clear knowledge of right and wrong, true and untrue – and thereby clearly establishing our personal boundaries. But the change/transformation that Jesus called for presupposed that and enabled it to go much deeper than that. He called for a different way of seeing – of seeing both life and God. He called for a vision of life that engages with reality through the eyes of love, a vision that can cope with paradox and even apparent contradiction, that is open to nuance, not so much forcing life into clear-cut categories but attuned to ‘more or less’, ‘both/and’ at the same time. Are you, for example, just or wicked, or a mixture of both? a thoroughly and consistently loving person, or one who loves somewhat selectively and not all of the time? Do you see God as just or merciful? A strict God of retributive justice who punishes evil, or a merciful God of restorative justice who heals our weaknesses and redeems us from our evil?

To move from the first level of development to the second level rarely happens before we hit the age of thirty or forty. Even then, it usually requires our falling in love, falling out of love, and finally committing to real love. Often it is occasioned by our being forced to face our inevitable limitations, usually through failure or through suffering. It can also be developed through the regular practice of prayerful contemplation or meditation. Perhaps it is best acquired by the combination of all three.

As it happens, our experience of life changes radically. Gradually we learn to detect the presence of God and the reign of God everywhere, in the most unlikely of places. Mary could see the loving God present even at the foot of the cross as she watched her son dying, perhaps joining with him as he said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” As we learn to open our eyes, we begin to see mercy, goodness, serenity in the most unlikely people, in the most unlikely places.