For What Do We Wait?
We celebrate today (tonight) the Third Sunday of Advent. In Church liturgies, this Sunday is also known as Gaudete Sunday. It marks the halfway point of Advent, a time when we continue our process of waiting for the Lord through greater commitment to prayer and reconciliation for the anniversary of the coming of the Lord at Christmas. The hope we feel that our wait will soon be over is symbolized by the wearing of rose vestments.
Now you have probably heard all of this before. To those of us who have been Catholics for a long time, the idea of hopeful waiting symbolized by the rose vestments is something we sort of accept without much thought. It is also kind of a nice antidote to all that purple we wear during Advent. But (tonight) today, I would like to engage you in thought by asking a rather simple question: For what are waiting?
Many of you know I have often decried the lost season of Advent. Oh, we celebrate it alright, but our secular culture has all but buried its meaning unless we work hard in our faith life to restore it. Having Christmas parties and Christmas trees in the Advent season, taking our lives into our own hands to buy Christmas presents in Advent which we then often take back during the real Christmas season have become some of the more irritating misplaced aspects of the Advent season.
Now don’t get me wrong. Low-key symbolic giving to each other is a fine thing. But there are bigger spiritual issues that should concern us. Advent is indeed a time of preparation and waiting for Christmas but we usually don’t know for what we are waiting. Because if all we are waiting for is presents on Christmas Day, it is no surprise that Advent becomes about Christmas parties and presents and the so-called Christmas spirit begins to fade away at the beginning of Christmas.
What we are celebrating in Advent is the reality of Jesus Christ in the lives of all of us yesterday, today, and forever. And we should understand that our lives both materially and spiritually are better because of the reality of Jesus in our lives.
The yesterday is Jesus’ arrival as a human being on this earth. Jesus’ arrival is foretold by the prophet Isaiah in our first reading today. Jesus was sent to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release to prisoners, and to announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God. Through Jesus, Isaiah says, the Lord God will make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.
At the beginning of Jesus’ public life, Jews were pursuing a number of means to deal with the misery of their lives. For some, accommodation with Roman authority seemed to make the most sense. This is what the Jewish religious class, the Pharisees and Sadducees did. They basically took the position that if pillage and exploitation were the name of the Roman game, better to go along to get along. Causing trouble would help no one, and keeping the peace, even without justice, was the primary requirement of their role as pastors of the people. And it was a pretty good deal for them, for they could maintain their elitist lifestyle, with its physical comforts and fancy robes and titles.
At the opposite end of the spectrum were the political revolutionaries. These were people, sometimes very religious, who nonetheless believed that God’s covenant with Israel could not be carried out as long as they were occupied by the Roman Empire. They believed that the Empire must be overthrown for God’s covenant to be fulfilled. These were the so-called zealots, which included in their ranks some of Jesus’ apostles and disciples. The most notable of these was Judas Iscariot, who became so angry at Jesus’ rejection of violent revolution that he betrayed him to the very Jewish authorities Judas supposedly hated.
A third group were those who chose self-imposed exile, living in the harshest conditions way out in the desert so as to have a personal relationship with God outside the reach of secular authority. To some degree, John the Baptist came from this tradition. Jesus had great respect for the personal piety of many of these hermits, called the Essenes. But undoubtedly what they sought was escape from, not freedom or justice for their people.
Finally, there was the great silent majority of Jewish society, those who simply lived in despair and exploitation, who gave up any real hope of bettering their lives materially or spiritually, eking out an existence in a most unjust society and taking whatever excitement they could find, moral or immoral.
Jesus’ message represented none of the above responses to deliver God’s people. This was in part why his people ultimately rejected him. Jesus’ message was better than any of the above ways of coping with suffering. It was the message that John the Baptist proclaims in the Gospel today (tonight). Jesus came to free us from the failings of our human conditions and the weakness of human solutions for dealing with them. At the same time, Jesus’ conquering of sin made it possible for us to work with Him in the building of what he called the Kingdom of God.
The term “Kingdom of God” or “reign of God” appears no fewer than 142 times in the Gospels. It transcends any political system, and therefore holds the potential to overcome the weaknesses of all of them. It applies not just to Palestine two thousand years ago, but in every place in the world today, including our own country. It has, little by little, brought at least some justice and a modicum of prosperity and spirituality to millions.
The Kingdom of God begins in our hearts. When we have set ourselves right, living as Jesus did, the Kingdom of God begins to take shape in our communities and our world. The Kingdom of God calls us to insist on equality for all. It places responsibility on all, especially the wealthy and powerful, to ensure the sharing in God’s material and spiritual gifts for the benefit of all, not just a few.
The Kingdom of God places service to God and others above the achievement of political goals of this or that “ism.” It rejects the efforts of political leaders anywhere to turn themselves into self-serving ventriloquists for what the will of God is. It involves prayer, service, sacrament, and the putting of God’s justice into practice. It demands that belief in the Kingdom of God can never be divorced from concern for the fate of all of God’s people not just in heaven but on this earth.
Finally, rather than wallowing in misery and a feeling of desperation about life, living in the Kingdom of God is the seeking of ultimate freedom by serving God and others, by recognizing and advocating personal dignity for all. The Kingdom of God stresses giving in order to receive, for all give of themselves and share in the bounty of God. The joy of being a Christian is knowing that no matter how much we suffer, we can never be separated from the love of God, the Lord of love, who came into this world, to usher in the Kingdom of God. As subjects in the Kingdom of God, we share the authority of the King of the World, for we are all kings in that kingdom.
That brothers and sisters, is what the Jews received in their waiting for when Jesus appeared on the earth. And it is what we wait for in Advent season. It is what we are supposed to be working for and enjoying the rest of the year. Not MP3 players or a big screen TV. Not crowded malls and angry shoppers.
Rather, we wait and work for the Kingdom of God by letting God change our hearts and the hearts of others. Advent celebrates the joy of serving God and others, and the more equitable sharing of the abundance God has given us. It focuses on the need to preserve not just property rights but labor rights, the expectation that to whom much is given, much is expected. The growth in a loving relationship with God rather than worship of material possessions which fade away. The serving of all by public authority not just a few. The preservation and strengthening of the quality of life at all ages. This was the message of the Incarnation (Christmas past). It is the joy and challenge of the Christmas present. Whenever in the course of the last 2000 years, substantial human progress in the quality of life has been made, the principles of the Kingdom of God were at the heart of that progress, whether people realized it or not.
As for the future, St. Paul tells us in our second reading to use all that God has given us to prepare for his second coming. We build and indeed make progress in building a new earth that is the Kingdom of God. We work with God to raise up saints that will populate a new heaven now open because of Jesus Christ’s coming at Christmas. We strive for a growth in holiness in loving God and others by the way we live, the way we strive for a more just and free society. We build Christmas present, while waiting for Christmas future. As the priest says at every Mass, we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.
This is what Advent means. This should be why celebrate it. Jesus Christ yesterday, today, and forever. Let this be the rosy hope of Gaudete Sunday. Let us pray that building and enjoying the Kingdom of God is the real joy of the Advent season for all of us.