Journey's Weekly Homilies

Fourth Sunday of Advent Cycle B
December 22nd, 2002
Homily by Laurie

2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1: 26-38  

The fourth Sunday of Advent always leaves me evaluating, if in any way, I have practiced repentance and turned toward God.  Has there been any thing that I can hold up and say, yes I was aware of the season and made steps to incorporate hope, joy or even peace into my life and the lives of those around me.  Such a harsh judge am I, that some years, my Advent failures have just paved the road to a recriminating New Years Day of epic proportions. Tis the season to be melancholy, fa, la, la, la, la.

Some how, I don’t think harsh judgment is the reason for the season. It is not a bad thing to do a bit of examining of our consciences, to look and see if we are watching and not just waiting.  But turning so inward makes it even more difficult to live the gospel.  I do think of Advent as a time of nurturing what of us dares to mark vigil, to watch and wait for life and death, for planting and harvest, for feast and famine. Revolutionary patience, Sam called it that first Sunday of Advent.  To prepare and to wait until the moment of action is given clarity and propelled into this world by our faith and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Until that time, with anger and longing, we cry out “Watchman, how far is the night?”

We go in this season, as Jim reminded us, to the wilderness, to the places made holy not because they are full of people and meaning, but because they wait for us to bring our busyness and confusion there, to wonder at all that is or might be, to dream, to begin to give flesh and voice to our longings, to sort out our righteous anger, from our merely wounded ego’s. The wilderness awaits us patiently; ready to show us paths not yet seen and love not yet given flesh.

We have not been preparing for the birth of a baby, Jesus is born today and yet again tomorrow, his work is begun and lives on in us. We prepare for that work, the reign of God, here now and even so waiting to be born. We prepare for an end to our anger and our longing.   This is a season for practicing, for learning to share, not as we did as children, but as adults learning to share what it is to stand with the poor, learning to find our voices to speak out for justice, to cry for peace. Learning to see and to hear where that recreation, that making new, has already begun, in us, in this place of believers, in this holy city.  This is a time for gentle nurturing of our inclination to do God’s will, not to scoff at our own and others sometimes feeble attempts to be Christ in the world. It is a time to laugh with good nature at the sometimes-duplicitous ways we convince ourselves that we are following after Jesus, and to make new choices, chose different paths.  “Jesus Messiah, lead your longing people home.”

I hope you have recognized the homilies of this Advent season. They have fed me on my way. Sam, Jim, and Nancy, read and interpreted for us, passages, from the gospel of Mark.  Mark is the shortest, most succinct gospel.  Mark is full and rich, but contains no birth narrative.  Mark has been tugging us towards Jerusalem and the cross.  Superimposed over this year of Mark is our liturgical calendar.  It’s Christmas time and tell it like it is Mark, lacks the poetry to mark the birth of a baby, much less the incarnation of God.

Enter the gospel of Luke, where Mary gets the good news.  Before singing the Magnificat, I’m betting she had herself a little wilderness time. Betrothed virgin, pregnant by Holy Spirit, informed of such by angel. Try telling that to the village busy bodies. Shame, would be on Mary and on her family.  Even today, there are cultures where such a tale might get a young girl stoned to death, lest other girls think about using a similar excuse. That is of course if we bring a literal interpretation to this story.  It is a good enough story, a story befitting the birth of a child destined to be more than village bastard.

It is a story to set up the birth of God becoming human child. It is fulfilling the promise God made to David in our reading from Samuel, “I will raise up your child after you. He will build a house for my name. This story of Mary is full of all those meanings and more. The Magnificat, the song Mary sang finally in response to this good news of incarnation is the song of all touched by God.  It is a song of thanksgiving and grace.  It is a song of freedom, freedom from the powers that contain and suppress us, a song for those breaking forth from the chains of no power or choice, a song of those on the way. It is our song for we are the house of God, made stronger and more beautiful than any edifice David could imagine. God is incarnate in every human being.  No matter our harsh judgment, no matter our haphazard preparations.  Mary, even in doubt and fear, dared to say yes, yes to being a vessel for God become human.  Can we pretend to be any less than human?  How I long to sing with Mary.

I sing with all my soul and praise the Lord. My heart is glad because of God my savior, for God has done great things for me, and who am I to merit God’s attention. We keep vigil for God is with us. Amen, so be it done to each and to all.