This homily was delivered at
Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton South Dakota on December 9, 2018
+ In the
name of our gracious and life-giving Lord, who was, who is, and is to
come. Amen +
Originally,
I was scheduled to give the homily last week, but winter weather in our beloved
state has a way of changing plans. So, I’m going to attempt to merge last
week’s homily with this week’s lessons as a way to connect some theological
dots found in this season of Advent.
Advent
is my favorite season of the Church Year; in part, because Advent invites one
to ponder one’s personal existence as an expression of God’s wholeness, God’s
completed creation, in the light of a series of discrete events that took place
some two thousand years ago. Every new Church Year, every first Sunday of Advent
begins with a Gospel reading from either Matthew, Mark or Luke in which Jesus
is talking to his disciples about the passing away of everything we see – Heaven
and Earth – EVERYTHING!
Everything;
that is, except the words of God, the creative utterances of God, God’s
creative energy.
On the
first Sunday of Advent, we also ponder the coming of Jesus, the Son of Man as
the risen Christ, the King of Glory, who comes to bring about the new creation
of which this risen Christ is called the first fruit by St. Paul. If we go back to the Sunday before last, to
Christ the King Sunday, we hear these words, “’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was,
and who is to come, the Almighty.” [1]
When you
put this all together what one finds is that right now we’re in the middle of
God’s creative now; that we’re encapsulated by this Alpha and Omega, or to put
it into Paul’s borrowed definition from the ancient Greek and Cretan poets, “For in Him (God) we live and move and have
our being.”[2]
Given that God, that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the total
completion of all that is, then the passing away language of scripture is not
about a dead end, but about a transformative journey towards completion, on
this side of life.
The
Jesuit priest and paleontologist, Pierre, Teilhard de Chardin described the
destination of this journey; the destination of the cosmos towards completion
as the Omega Point[3]
– a point, according to scripture, that already exists. But just as we cannot see the curvature of
the earth from where we stand on the earth, we cannot see the totality of life,
of God’s completed creation from our transitory situation on this side of life,
in our current existence.
So
Advent isn’t just about what came or what’s coming around the bend, it’s also
about our becoming, our journey to completion in the here and now. And if that leaves our minds spinning and if
we find it hard to wrap our heads around all of this, God helps us out by
giving us something, or better yet, someone we can relate to and not only wrap
our minds around but our hearts also – a small, vulnerable baby boy, born in a
barn, named Jesus who came into this transitory world as the enfleshed source of
our being.
It’s in Jesus’s life, death,
and resurrection that we can see the light at the end of this journey, the
light of salvation – the completion, the Omega Point.
Now
that’s a lot of theology in a few short statements, but that’s where Advent
begins - So back to where we are today on this Second Sunday of Advent. In today’s Gospel, we are reintroduced to our
friend, the prophet, John the Baptizer, best known as the prophet who sees
Jesus for who he is, the Son of God.
The role
of a prophet is largely to point out the ignored obvious, to speak truth to the
powers of this world, and to help us clear away the clutter in our lives in
order to make our journey easier. As our
reading from Baruch this morning points out, prophets carry out God’s order “that every high mountain and the
everlasting hills be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
so that Israel (all of us) may walk safely in the glory of God.”[4]
Every
true prophet, from the likes of Moses and John the Baptizer to Martin Luther
King Jr. have the ability to see the trajectory of this transitory life leading
to and completed in the Omega Point of salvation. Every true prophet, in every generation,
becomes a voice crying out in this wilderness called life a message of hope
that prepares the way of the Lord or, as our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry
likes to call it, “The way of Love” so that all flesh, all of God’s children can see the salvation of God; can see our completion in Christ.
John
certainly played that role, and it is John, who in the case of Jesus, was able to
see something that wasn’t so obvious, something that was forgotten, something
that was unthinkable at the time; the intimate nearness of God – God with us –
God in us – God through us – as experienced and witnessed in the person of
Jesus; in the personhood of Christ, what Jesus called the Kingdom or Reign of
God.
God sent forth prophets like John in times of need, even when we’re not personally
cognizant of having a need. The
prophet’s call to repent is to wake us up, to see our derailment from the way
of love, to straighten out our act, to turn to the source of our being, to
embrace the humility that comes through the recognition that we are part of and
dependent on something much larger than ourselves.
The prophet’s voice gives voice to God’s
loving, creative utterances that embrace us and keep us safe. The prophet reminds us to walk with the
God who walks with us and to exercise a justice that is grounded in God’s
love for all creation.
Advent
reminds us of these things as we call to mind the prophet, John the Baptizer.
Jesus,
too, is a prophet.
As Jesus
reminded his disciple, when talking about the passing of all things and the tribulations that every generation endures, not to fret; not to get
bothered by them, but rather to exercise patience (often easier said than done) because Jesus says that patience deepens us, makes us more soulful.[5]
This
short season of Advent is a pause between what is coming and what has been, to
put us for a brief moment in the creative now of God, to still us and to deepen
us through patience on our journey, led by Jesus to the point of
completion. Most importantly, Advent
provides us needed time to reflect on our becoming, both as individuals and as
a church – to see in the birth of Jesus and the coming of Jesus, the Christ, the
immense embrace of God’s complete love for all of us.
The
birthday of Jesus is, in many ways, the birthday of us all, as our Creed reminds us,
“Through him all things were made.” So
while we wait to celebrate the birthday of Jesus this Advent season, allow me to
close with a poem I composed on Christmas Eve, ten years ago:
Now the waiting time is done,
Earth’s long winter overcome,
Light illuminating darkest skies.
Weary people, now arise and
Greet this time, it has no end
Alpha-Omega enters in.
Let hearts be filled with
Christmas light
For in the Child’s approach this
night
It is we who arrive, Love’s
greatest delight.[6]
Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Until next time, stay faithful.
[1]
Revelation1:8 and referenced again as Christ in Revelation 22:13
[2]
Acts 17:28
[3] A
term first coined by Teilhard de Chardin in his book “The Phenomenon of Man.”
[4] Baruch
5:7
[5] References
King James translation of Luke 21:19 – “In your patience possess ye your souls.”
[6]
Composed December 24, 2008 as I was waiting to play the organ between a 5 PM
and an 11 PM service.
