Second Sunday in Ordinary time, cycle B

John 1:35-42

Our modern civilization is pretty peculiar. One of the things that's normal for human beings is to progress in physical, mental and emotional development by modeling yourself after various role models. A small boy would model himself after his dad or an older brother; a little girl would look to her mother or an older sister for clues on how to behave. As time went on, the role model might change, and indeed, change many times. Sometimes it would be a teacher or a coach, other times, a movie actor or a famous athlete. Eventually if someone was oriented to a career, a practioner of the craft would take on job of being a role model.

Our western society began to break this pattern down during the Vietnamese war and the days of the Hippies. Young people began to question their role models, and eventually came to the conclusion that modeling yourself on someone of the older generation was a losing game. Even though most of us weren't hippies or war protesters, the attitude was there. Question authority. Look at the older generation with deep suspicion. And those who should have been role models felt threatened by those expectations, and also by the fact that role models had to model how one was to live – ethically and morally, spiritually and emotionally. And as young people grew older, they shunned the job of being a role model.

But we are hard wired, and the need to model yourself creeps out in unexpected ways. I remember a particular time when I was working. The person who was leading my study group had come from another part of the country, and whenever he felt the discussion was getting pointless, he would summarize by saying, “at the end of the day....” an expression I had never heard before. But within a week or two, everyone was saying 'at the end of the day...” before making a summary statement. I'm sure you can think of examples of your own.

I had many role models – my dad, one of my uncles, a priest who taught in our high school – but one person stands out. When I was in medical school it was the first time in my life I was not in a Catholic school. I felt a little lost, because very few of my classmates were religious at all, let alone Catholic. You have to remember that during those years there was a distinct Catholic culture, and that seems to be dying out. Anyway, I learned of evenings of recollection given by an organization called “Opus Dei” and I began attending them. There I met a man who was a dental surgeon, and taught at the University of San Francisco. As I got to know him, I saw that he worked hard to be as good as he could be at his profession and teaching it to his students. At the same time he was totally in love with his faith. For him, the vocation he had was a religious one, or could be made into a religious one, because of his faith. He kind of embodied the whole purpose of Opus Dei, which could be summed up in the words, “your work is holy; it is the way you will become holy; and it is the way you will make the world holy”.

John the Baptist has been proclaiming that he was just a forerunner, he wasn't the Messiah. Nevertheless he attracted a lot of disciples. There's a tiny religion in Southern Iraq who call themselves Mandeans. Their origin is lost in history and they are very secretive, but they believe that John the Baptist was the Messiah, and will come again. I suspect during the early days of the Church there were still followers of John, and in fact they may have been seen as rivals to the Christian movement. Our Gospel tells us that John points to Jesus and says he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The two disciples get up and follow him. At this point we have the dialogue: Jesus says, “What do you seek?” and the disciples, oddly, answer, “Where are you staying? And Jesus replies, “Come and you will see.” It turns out that the best translation of what the disciples said is “Where do you abide?” and that was an expression that in modern English probably meant something like “What makes you tick?” or more politely, “we want to know what is special about you”. And Jesus does not stop and say, “Well, I'm the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity and the Word made Flesh.” He says, “come and you will see.”

The disciples did, and over the course of three years they had ample time to model themselves on Jesus – and the author of the Acts of the Apostles takes pains to show us that Peter and Paul preach, work miracles, and even raise the dead – so well have they absorbed the pattern set down by their Master. And that's really the whole story of Christianity – people noticing something special about another person, and resolving to model themselves on that person. Our role models, who in turn had role models, are the saints and other holy persons.

We've just finished celebrating the Incarnation – the fact that God became a human being. It's a mystery that we'll never fully understand, but maybe one of the reasons was so that we would have a role model for how to be a holy human being. I could tell you that getting to know Jesus requires careful study of the gospels, but that's not really true. After all those who knew Jesus best didn't even have gospels to study. Gospel study is good, but it's not for everyone. Before literacy became widespread, Christians knew the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection from what they heard in church, or saw depicted in the stained glass windows. Getting to know Jesus does require knowing about his life, but it also requires role models. Because when we meet a real Christian, we meet Jesus himself. And just as we need role models, we need to be role models, and be conscious of the fact that we are role models for other people.

When I met my friend in Opus Dei, I was attracted to how he blended his medical vocation with his religious vocation. There were some things about his life that I would not want for myself, and that's ok as well. No role model is perfect.

Saint Paul understood this very well; he told the Corinthians “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ”. So who is your role model? And if you don't have one, maybe having one will help you progress in your Christian life. And who are you a role model for? I'm reminded of another quote from the gospel of Luke: “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

Epiphany, 2018

Matthew 2:1 – 12

What would Christmas be without the Three Kings? As you can see, one is old, one is African, and one looks like the King of Hearts in a deck of cards. There is a whole literature on them, including the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar. Of course they were also called Apellus, Amerus, and Damasius by a historian in the middle ages. There are stories about how each of them after returning to wherever they came from set out to lay the groundwork for the apostles who would be the first missionaries. But all we really know is right here. They were called “magi” which may or may not mean “astrologer” We don't know how many there were. There weren't any camels, unfortunately. All we know is that they gave Jesus the highly symbolic gifts of gold, for a king, frankincense for a high priest, and myrrh for embalming a body.

Matthew, who always tries to line up Jesus' life with the prophecies of Isaiah and the figure of Moses in the Old Testament, is at work here as well. The first reading tells us about camels and gold and frankincense. And the prophecy says that “you shall be radiant at what you see, and your heart shall throb and overflow” – and the magi were overjoyed when the start they were following stopped over the home of the Christ Child. And we could say a lot more about Matthew's approach to telling the story of Jesus, but not right now, thankfully.

There are some things we can say, though, that might apply to our own lives. First, the Magi and Herod both receive the same revelation – that the ruler who is to shepherd Israel will come from Bethlehem. And we have no indication that Herod did not believe this. Indeed, Herod must have believed it because he later on ordered the slaughter of all the boys under the age of two years. Now Herod in the scriptures is a villain, and in real life he wasn't much better. He executed three of his sons and his favorite wife because he thought they were plotting to take over his throne. It's said that Herod was so upset about having to kill his wife that he wandered around in mourning for several days. Probably we don't see a resemblance in ourselves to Herod. But we are with him when something comes along that demands change. Even though all of us know we will grow old, get sick, lose loved ones and eventually die, we cling to what we have, often long after we should let it go. In our house, just as an example, we have stuff we got more than 50 years ago, plus boxes of stuff our children had, and it's very hard to part with these things, even though nobody including us, wants them. And that's a minor issue, of course. But there are more serious ones, like the man with early Alzheimer's disease who won't stop driving, or the doctor who is way passed his prime but continues to operate on patients. We are like Herod, we cling to things, even though if we stepped back and thought about it, everything in our lives comes from God.

The Magi, on the other hand, receive their revelation and do something about it. They leave their homes, travel through foreign lands, probably at night, since they are following a star. And when they reach their destination, they are overjoyed as they part with their gifts. Maybe that's a model for us. Instead of clinging to the past, to the status quo, to stuff, can we leave our comfort zone for God? I don't mean becoming a missionary to a foreign land or joining a monastery, although maybe one or two of us are called to that sort of thing. I mean rather, looking at what makes us uncomfortable and asking whether this is something God wants me to do.

In my own situation, I never thought I would enjoy visiting people with declining physical and mental abilities; in fact, until Father Reilly asked me to help out at the Jewish Geriatric Facility, I would not have chosen that for a ministry. But despite my discomfort, I began, and now I look forward to the opportunity – I get a chance to meet Christ suffering in these people, and I in some limited way bring Christ to them. Certainly by diving into your own discomfort you quickly learn whether it is going to help you grow as a Christian or is definitely not for you.

And like the magi, we are all given gifts, gifts for the building up of the Church. Saint Paul says each Christian is given a charism. The Magi joyfully gave their gifts away when they met Jesus. How are we giving our gifts away? Do we even know what they are?

And maybe another insight is that when the Magi had met Jesus, it says they went home by a different way. We have just celebrated the fact that God became one of us, that the Divine broke into his own creation with the intention of drawing it all back into himself – we know that a great mystery of our faith is that God has chosen to build up his kingdom through us. There is no back up plan. We know the kingdom will come, but whether our lives will help bring it about or get in its way, depends on our choices.

Herod learned of the newborn king and he did not change; perhaps in his brutality he became even more himself. The Magi encountered the newborn king and went home by a different route; they allowed themselves to be changed.

You and I encounter the risen Lord every time we celebrate the Eucharist. We experience God breaking into the world at every Holy Mass. If we encounter Christ and are not changed, what is the point? If we are still part of this world, where violence, consumerism, poverty and perversion continue to rule the culture, we are not in the kingdom. But if we follow Jesus example, if we go by a different route, then the kingdom is coming and we are bringing it on.

The Holy Family, 2017

Luke 2:22-40

Like many of you, I'm a grandparent. It's a good life; the grandchildren are usually on their best behavior when they drop around, because they know their grandmother and I are easy touches for cookies and soda and a little cash, maybe. We can sort of pick and choose when we see them, although there is the occasional baby sitting job or the last minute car ride that someone needs. And we don't have to worry – at least not as much as we worried about our own kids. The heavy worrying is the parents job, not ours. And all in all we enjoy our grandchildren, not all at once, mind you, but in small doses. During this Christmas season we've seen all the grandchildren, all nineteen of them, so we've had an overdose.

But there is one thing about being a grandparent that comes to mind every now and then. I look at my six year old granddaughter and realize that I won't be around when she graduates from college. I see my seven year old grandson and know I won't be there when he gets married. Seeing the little ones is a reminder of my own mortality.

Today we see Simeon and Anna, two elderly people, maybe grandparents in their own right, as they marvel over the Christ child. Simeon prays the prayer that all the clergy and religious in the church pray every night, “Now you can dismiss your servant, O Lord...” Simeon most likely dreamed about the day when the Messiah would come in triumph and rescue Israel. Maybe he thought of him as a powerful king, or a great prophet, or the High Priest who would reign forever – the leading thinkers were not clear on what role the Messiah would play, but all agreed it would be prominent and triumphant. But Simeon knows he will never witness the moment for which he and countless other Jews have waited his whole life. He must be content with a glimpse of the infant.

And I don't know how my grandchildren will end up. I can hope that they will have good lives, that they will stay in the Church, that if they are to get married they will find good spouses. But we all know that those hopes might be dashed. We live in a world where drugs and alcohol destroy lives; where a war may break out and a promising young man or woman will die or be severely crippled defending our country. And many of us have had first-hand experience of a child or sibling, someone dear to us, losing his or her faith.

Simeon had faith, faith that God had a purpose for the world. And if God has become flesh, if God is driving the universe toward a goal only He can see, then Simeon can take comfort in the fact that he himself is caught up in God's ongoing creative action. We remember Simeon because of the words recorded in scripture; but we should also remember that even though Simeon spent a lot of time in the temple, most of his day was taken up with the usual human activities of working for a living, eating, sleeping, and all the other things that even here in the 21^st century occupy most people most of the time. But all of that is part of Simeon's life as well. If Simeon's prophecy and prayer that made it into the gospels is part of God's plan, then so is the rest of Simeon's life.

And if I believe that God is at work in the world, drawing all things to himself, bringing order out of disorder, gradually building a kingdom that will last forever, a kingdom where what will be on earth will be as it is in heaven, then my short little time on this earth takes on infinite importance, because I am part of God's plan – in fact, a necessary part. God invites me to be a co-creator of his kingdom, as he does my grandchildren. And I don't know what that kingdom will look like when God's work is finished. Sometimes we think our role is very small and unessential; after all, God will get what he wants, right? But I think that's the point of the wounds in the body of the Risen Christ – our imprint will be on God's kingdom, good or bad.

The other thing I know about the kingdom is that my role in building it doesn't involve some heroic act; it doesn't involve me founding a religious order or writing a deathless spiritual classic or converting a nation of pagans. All the great things we can point to in our church's history are really works of God through willing individuals. Mother Theresa was willing, but I suspect you could have found several hundred dedicated holy religious sisters who would also have been willing. The only thing I can bring to God's table that is really mine is love. Saint Therese of Liseaux is a doctor of the Church because of her great insight that it was not doing great things that brought about God's kingdom, but doing the little things with great love.

So what I can hope for my grandchildren is that they will help build up God's kingdom by learning to do little things with great love, and that they will also understand that they are not insignificant, that because they are sons and daughters of God whatever they do is of God, whether it has to do with doing the dishes or sweeping the floor or running a business or becoming an entertainer. And in embarking upon life with great love they bring the kingdom closer.

And as we enter a new year that should be our resolution; this year we will strive to see that there is glory in everything we do; that God is close to us when we act out of love; and that we can act out of love in every action we perform. And as we practice allowing love to be our motivator, instead of greed or anger or envy or fear, we gradually become love, and then we are on the right side of history – because in the end, Love wins.

Christmas, 2017

John 1:1-18

I was named after my father. My name is Donald Joseph, and my Father's was John Donald. He in turn was named after his father, whose name was John Silas. We named our son Donald John and threw in the name Matthew as well giving him a choice about what he wanted to call himself. And it's interesting to find out why people were given the names they have. Some people spend a lot of energy drawing up names for their children. I had an Uncle and Aunt who named each of their five children with a name that began with M. I don't know why, maybe they just liked that letter better than the other 25. And I'm sure everyone knows someone whose first name seems to have been selected to go with the family name – Like the movie star Rip Torn. And what do we do with names? Many people make a conscious choice to be called something else; I know several people who have chosen to go by their middle name, and even when they sign their name the first name is remembered by a letter. Names are random sounds and at the same time they take on meaning from the person who is given the name. Names resonate with connections. After World War II, the rather common name “Adolph” became extremely rare for quite a while. And I suspect few babies, at least in liberal Massachusetts, will be named Donald for many years.

The gospel of Luke has the familiar story of the annunciation, in which Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear a son and is to name him Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthew an angel appears to Joseph and tells him the same thing, to name this child Jesus.

The name Yashwah was not unusual among the Hebrews. The successor of Moses, who actually led the Israelites into the promised land, had the same name – only we pronounce it Joshua. Other variations we meet in scripture include Jesse and Joses. But Jesus did not get his name from his parents, it came by way of angels directly from God, and God doesn't do anything frivolously; The Son he sent in to the world could have no other name.

Yashwah means “God saves”. I think we all would agree that this is an appropriate name, after all, we Christians believe that God became a human being to save us. But sometimes we ask, how does that happen? Fathers and doctors of the Church have come up with different ideas. They all seem to revolve around the idea that Jesus pays off a debt that we could never pay off, or that Jesus offers his life to his Father in place of our lives. Salvation seems to be a transaction. But I think the names of Jesus may suggest something different.

Another name for Jesus is found in the first part of the Gospel of John, where he is called “Word”.

A very unusual thing about human beings is that our minds are formed by words. The theologian Hans Urs Von Balthazar wrote: “After a Mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin to smile back; she has awakened love in its heart, and in awakening love in its heart, she awakes also recognition.” But of course the other thing a mother does is speak words to the child, who through those words begins to recognize that he is not alone, that he is loved, that he belongs. We know of situations where children were raised without words, and the result is that if they attempt to learn their language as teens or young adults they never achieve normal socialization, and in fact never become very fluent. To be without words is to be isolated, lonely and incapable of fully participating in our human society.

And maybe that's what Jesus as the Word is all about. We human beings, even when we have families, even when we have loving relationships, eventually realize that nothing is permanent, nothing lasts forever; our assumptions are shaken to the core. I recently talked with a friend who had just had a heart attack. It was mild, he had stents placed, he was back to normal a few days later. But he was totally shaken; he said he had to re-evaluate everything, having had a personal brush with death. And he is a man of faith.

Jesus as the Word of God is like a mother's words that begin the process of bringing a baby into his full humanity; The Word of God tells us that we do not need to fear, there is meaning in the world, there is a plan for each of us. The Word of God calls us out beyond the fear, darkness, and chaos that prevents us from entering the world of self-expression, thought, and conscious love. The Word of God calls us into a relationship which is the end of being alone, being frightened, being at the mercy of the world, our own bodies, and other people.

When we respond to the Word that is part of what is meant by being saved; we've been made free from the limitations our human condition puts upon us, and from the ultimate limitation, which is death. Because the third name for Jesus is the name given by the prophet Isaiah, who said that a virgin would bear a child and his name would be called Emmanuel, God with us. And when we realize that God is with us, that he is closer to us than our own heart, that he will never withdraw his love, than we can say with Paul, “If God is with us, who can be against us?” and “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Jesus …..Jesus ….Jesus. When God names something, it becomes what God has named it. And there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.

Go forth today breathing the name Jesus on this day we celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Fourth Sunday of Advent, cycle B

Luke 1:26-38

I visit with a man now and then who had a massive stroke at the age of 55. He can barely walk, can't use one arm, and can't really take care of himself. His mind was not affected. He's a man of faith, and even though he's in an assisted living facility, He has organized a bible study and rolls around on his wheel chair visiting the other people in the place. If you talk to him long enough, he'll tell you that he sees his situation as a blessing. He believes that God loves him, and put him in this situation, in these circumstances, for a reason. And if that is what God wants, that's what he wants.

Whenever we Catholics say the Hail Mary, we repeat the words the angel speaks to her in this gospel story – of course the original story was in Greek, so whether we hear the words differently in the gospel just read or in the Hail Mary isn't important. They are just translations.

But we call Mary blessed. The angel calls her “favored one”. Sort of the same thing. And most of us would see a relationship between being blessed and having good things happen to us, or at least avoiding bad things. But I wonder how blessed Mary felt when she learned that God was going to overshadow her and bring about a pregnancy; a child conceived out of wedlock. What would Joseph think. What would the people of the little village think? What would happen to her? And I wonder how blessed she felt when she saw her son crucified like a common criminal. And you could probably think of other times Mary wondered whether being God's favorite was worth it? I think that's something to take to our own prayers. For Mary and for you and I, there is no obvious relationship between good fortune and being one of God's favored ones.

So what does being favored mean? We can go back in salvation history and look at the favored ones. There was Abraham, whose life God upended – Abraham who was told to leave his country and wander in foreign lands. Abraham who seemed destined never to have children and then when God finally brought that about, he was told to sacrifice that child. Abraham who died with no sign that God was keeping his promise that he would become a great nation. Or Moses, whom God called from his life as a herdsman raising a family in Moab, to confront the Pharoah of Egypt. Moses who was given the task of leading a people through the desert and who cried out for God to take his life because the people he was trying to lead kept rebelling. Moses who after all those years was denied actually entering into the land God had reserved for the Israelites. Or think of Jonah, who tried to run away when God told him to preach repentance to the Ninevites, and ended up getting swallowed by a whale. Being favored or blessed does not mean getting good things. But it does mean that God is giving you a role in his grand plan; he lets us human beings participate in his ongoing creation.

I've heard it said many times that Mary was asked to be the mother of Jesus. Saint Bernard preached a famous sermon along these lines. What might have happened if she'd said no? But when you read this gospel carefully, you don't hear the angel asking. He's telling Mary what is going to happen. During Mary's time, there were all kinds of stories about gods who impregnated mortal women after seduction and sometimes rape. Mary probably had heard the stories of the Roman, Greek and Egyptian gods. I wonder if that was the point of her question, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” And then the angel goes into detail about what will happen, and how the child she will bear will inherit David's throne, will be the very Son of God. Never does the angel say “how about it, Mary? Will you do it?” It seems to me that Mary is told that God is going to radically change her life, and there's nothing she can do about it.

I think that's the fate of everyone. Every one of us can recall moments when our own lives were radically changed, without our consent. We all know people who through genetics or accident or disease were physically or mentally changed so that they don't enjoy what most of us take for granted. Can we say they are favored as well? I think so, because if we believe God loves each of us and wants us to be partners with him in building up his kingdom, then he must be offering his favor, his blessing, to everyone.

And that is where Mary's freedom comes in. Mary might not have had a choice about bringing Jesus into the world, with all the pain and sorrow that it would entail, but she did have a choice about how she was going to proceed forward. She would not be like Abraham who rather than wait on God decided to have a child by his wife's slave; she would not be like Moses who told God that he couldn't speak that well, maybe Aaron his brother? She wouldn't be like Jonah, who tried to sail away from his fate and later became angry with God for not destroying the city of Nineveh.

No, Mary when told what God had in store for her cried out with joy, “Do it to me, do what you said you would do!” Because Mary, free from any stain of sin, knew that the best thing a human being could do was the will of God. Nothing else mattered.

And that's the lesson of the Annunciation, the story we've just heard. Each of us is given moments when we are invited into God's plan. Very often it's not something we would choose if we had our way. Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it appears to be a great loss. Sometimes we are invited to accompany Jesus on the road to Calvary. And that's the challenge. Can we embrace God's will for us? Can we be like Mary and say, “Do it to me, do what you said you would do?”

Third Sunday of Advent, cycle B

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Today's gospel is the same scene as last Sunday's. Last week Mark told the story. This time it's John. Notice that there is nothing here about camel's hair or eating bugs dipped in honey. The Gospel writer tells us that a man named John was sent by God to testify concerning the light. The Gospel writer emphasizes that John was not the light.

Maybe John had received a special revelation from God. But then again, maybe not. John, after all, if we are to believe Luke, was the son of a Jewish priest. As you may know, the priesthood was hereditary, so John would have not only had the right to be a priest, he would have that as a duty. And we know that priests began their careers at a very early age – generally the teen years. The other thing that maybe points to John's priesthood is the fact that he is baptizing with water. If you were a gentile and wanted to become a Jew, part of the process requires a ritual bath which was arranged by the priest. In Orthodox Jewish communities even today the ritual bath is still used. Our ritual of baptism probably was derived from this tradition. I think the Pharisees saw the symbolism in what John was doing. When they asked him by what authority he was baptizing, it seems that they expected something like that, which was reflected in the guessing about his identity. They expected someone would come along and revitalize Israel, but surely it would be someone important.

John's job was to testify to the light. In his experience as a priest, I wonder if he became disillusioned. If he studied scripture, he must have read that Isaiah had quoted God as saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” and yet every day priests were being paid to sacrifice animals – paid with money earned by hard labor. Maybe John had become disgusted with so many of the priests who really believed in nothing but enriching themselves; we know that most priests were Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection. We also know that the high priests were very tight with the authorities. John may have looked at the Pharisees as an alternative, but it wasn't much better. In their efforts to keep the law they were spending enormous amounts of time and energy working out exactly what the law was for every conceivable situation. And they were trying very hard to get everyone to do what they were doing. When John compared what was actually happening with what the prophets said God wanted of his people, he could see how Israel was missing the mark and when he preached and baptized, he was trying to jump-start a new Israel.

We've seen other prophets like John, people like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela – people who looked at the world they lived in and saw that this was not the way things were supposed to be. And this vision became the force behind their heroic attempts to change the world, sometimes being imprisoned or even killed as a result.

But there is another type of testifying. Maybe an example is the kind of witness the apostles gave. The apostles had been through a marvelous experience. They had walked and talked with the Son of God himself; they had seen his miracles, they had listened to his preaching, they had been his friends and witnessed his life, death and resurrection. And this was the subject of their testimony. When you read the sermons of Peter and Paul and others in the New Testament, the subject is Jesus Christ and him crucified. When the authorities told the apostles to quit their preaching, Peter replied that if they were silenced the very stones would cry out.

Because of our baptism, we are also to be witnesses. Because of our confirmation, we are given the strength to witness. Jesus promised that when we were put on the spot he would give us the words we needed to say. We Christians who are adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus, who can claim God as Father, are in the world to testify as John did, so that all might believe.

And we also are supposed to witness in both ways. We too can look at the world and judge it; we can see how things are and how things should be. Being this kind of witness is hard, and can get us into trouble. It's a lot harder to publicly stand up for Christian values today than it was twenty years ago. But Jesus promised that those who were persecuted for his sake would inherit the kingdom of heaven. One way we can all witness is to learn why the Church teaches what she does, about same sex marriage, about abortion, about physician assisted suicide, about any of the current hot topics. When we understand these things then we are prepared to give an account of ourselves, as Saint Peter urged us in his first letter. Another way of course is to put our Christian principles into practice in some way, so that we are giving some of our time and some of our treasure to promote the kingdom of heaven.

But the other kind of witness, the testimony of the wonderful things God has been doing, is also our responsibility. When we look at our own lives, especially through the rear view mirror, we can often see that God was there when we didn't know it. Think back to the big turning points in your life, some of them good and some not so good. We can be sure that God was there, offering us grace, helping us grow, drawing us closer to him, because that's what God does, even though it hurts sometimes. And when we look at the Church to which we belong, the Church Jesus left us, that's something to be grateful for as well.

The early Christians told the world how things should be, and many died for that. And they told the world about the wonderful things God was doing, and because of that, the Church grew. If we Christians were brave enough to testify, think of how much better off the world would be. Isn't it time we realized that like John the Baptist we have also been sent by God to testify to the light?

Second Sunday of Advent, cycle b

Mark 1:1-8

One day in the old west a cowboy galloped into a little town. “Big Jake is coming” he said. The people all rushed into their homes, nailed boards over the windows and doors, and the ones that had storm cellars hid in them. The bartender was just finishing barricading a window when a huge man with an evil expression on his face burst through the door and demanded a whiskey. The bartender poured the drink, the man threw it back and glared at the bartender. He timidly said, “Would you like another?” The man replied, “I wish I could, but I'm getting out of town. Big Jake is coming.”

I love the gospel of Mark. No story of Jesus' infancy or geneology; nothing about how Jesus was the Word of God from all eternity; Mark just dives in with these verses about John the Baptist. But with Mark, you always have to be aware that he says a lot in just a few words. Look at how he describes John: Clothed in camel hair, with a diet of locusts and honey. It's a wonder that anyone at all followed him, right? People in those days were just as wary of wierdos as we are today. If we saw someone on the street wearing nothing but a camel's hair tunic and eating bugs dipped in honey, we would probably notify the authorities. But whether or not John actually wore camel's hair and had a diet as described, Mark's Jewish readers would get the point. They knew that in the first book of Kings Elijah, the greatest of their prophets, had been clothed in camel's hair. As for the locusts anytime you meet a locust in the Old Testament, something bad is going to happen. And the enemies of the Israelites are always being compared to locusts. Some people say that the idea of John eating locusts points to the fact that the new order he is bringing in to being will defeat once and for all the enemies of Israel. And the honey, well, we know that Israel was described as a land of milk and honey, and one of the psalms promises that God will feed Israel honey from a rock. Honey has to do with the promise of good things. John comes out of the wilderness – where Adam and Eve had been exiled. God is finally ready to set things right. And John baptizes people with water. If you were a gentile and wanted to become a Jew, you went through a ritual bath. John, whose father was a priest, had a hereditary right to the priesthood, and his baptism was the beginning of a new Jerusalem.

So this new Elijah comes to establish a new Israel, and you can listen to him and be part of it, symbolized by the honey, or you can reject his message and be on the side of the locusts.

So it is important to listen to John's message. The first thing he tells his followers is that Big Jake is coming. If you think John is great, wait till you meet the one he points to. We get that. But John is offering a baptism of repentance. As you've heard many times, the Greek word does not mean feeling sorry for your sins. It means “change your mind” or “turn around”. Probably another phrase would be “look at yourselves!” When we read about John in the gospels, that's kind of what he is getting people to do. He tells tax collectors to collect only what is due, because most of them collected as much as they could get away with. He tells soldiers to be content with their pay, because most of them took bribes and used their positions for extortion. He tells Herod that his marriage to his half-brother's divorced wife is unlawful. He calls the authorities a “brood of vipers” because they think being descended from Abraham makes them special.

Now the thing about repentance is that it is the easy part. Like John, who recognized his unworthiness, most of us are quite capable of recognizing our own faults and sins if we take a good look. We are even better, of course, in pointing out the sins and faults of other people, as was John. But if you are like me, and you are, the really hard thing is to break a bad habit, to get rid of those sins we confess over and over. It's much easier to just tell ourselves that these things aren't so bad, that other people are worse, that I just don't have the willpower I need. And we find that our lives don't change much from year to year, and we don't see the change we would like.

And that is John's issue. He can tell what's wrong, he can even get you to see what's wrong in yourself, but he can't fix it. You can't fix it.

But Big Jake can fix it. The one who is coming with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Because as any member of Alcoholics Anonymous can tell you, breaking an addiction requires something more than yourself, call it grace, a higher power, something like that. And that's the longing in everyone's heart – that someone lifts the burden of sin from our shoulders, because we can't do it ourselves.

And that's what we should probably take away from our encounter with John the Baptist. Because even those of us who believe often seem to think that if only we had more willpower, if only we prayed more, fasted more, gave more to charity, disciplined ourselves, we could free ourselves from all that keeps us from being truly happy. And that's wrong. It is only when we open ourselves up to the fire of the Holy Spirit, it's only when we get out of God's way and let him work on us that we will finally make progress in our spiritual lives.

So how do we do that? We don't. We wait, we pray, we let go so that God will do in us what he has promised. It isn't easy because that's not how we who always want to be in control are designed. But at the same time, it requires no effort on our part.

So that is a purpose of Advent, to remember that we are a people in need of saving, a people who cannot save themselves. And we wait for the savior, but with the confidence that he is coming as he promised.