Advent

Dec 05 2024

This Is Only a Test

Twelve-year-olds sauntered into the school cafeteria. Seventy year-olds sat down on benches around the lunch tables. I was giving an intergenerational workshop to about a hundred and twenty people. There were as many middle-schoolers as there were adults. As a presenter, you learn to gauge your audience. This audience felt squirmy. Downright wriggly. So I said, “We’ll have a test at the end.” Suddenly “squirmy” turned into “attentive.”

I did give a test at the end. The middle-schoolers did better than the adults; they were more oriented toward being tested and thus more attentive. A few adults chatted in the hallway, assuming “she doesn’t really mean it.” But I did mean it.

How does “there will be a test” change a person’s attentiveness? In Jesus’ day, the Israelites were oriented toward being tested: the God in whom they believed was the God to whom they were accountable. You can hear it in their repeated question to John the Baptist: three times, they ask, “What should we do?” If the Judge of the Universe is coming near, what should we do?

Yes, there will be a test at the end of life. Yes, God means it. St. Paul says, do good, be honorable, be true—run on God’s power. Be pure, be just, be filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Should “there will be a test” send us into a funk of gloom and doom? By no means! But this Advent, we cannot presume on God’s kindness and keep chatting in the hallways. The Divine Test-Giver is coming. We are to be attentive. The God in whom we believe is the God to whom we are accountable.

God’s judgment is also God’s mercy, says the prophet Zephaniah. Today is Gaudete (joyful) Sunday. That mercy is also our joy! Rejoice always! The Lord is near! To be ready for his coming, we ask, “What shall we do?”

Consider/Discuss

Jesus Christ himself is the ultimate test. How closely do our lives resemble his? That’s a pretty high standard. Good enough is . . . well . . . just not good enough. This Advent, we can look inside and ask ourselves, How am I orienting my thoughts, my energies, and my actions? Am I chatting away in the hallway? Or am I paying close attention, asking, “Lord, what should I do?” and then doing it?
Judgment and mercy—how do we keep those both before us? Today’s readings lift us up to help us to soar in the Spirit: Rejoice always! Shout for joy! Be glad and exult with all your heart! Do not be discouraged, do not fear! How can we get more in the habit of rejoicing in God always?

Living and Praying with the Word

Good and gracious Test-Giver, have mercy on us. You know that we don’t live an A-plus life all the time. You know that being like Jesus sets a really high standard. And yet you draw us to that kind of life anyway. We know that there will be a test at the end. Do not let us grow slack. By your grace, keep us attentive to the movement of your Spirit. My Lord and my God, what shall we do, together, today?

Dec 05 2024

Scripture Study for

The book of Zephaniah is marked by a strong and graphic emphasis on the destructive consequences of Israel’s infidelity to their relationship with God. One gets the clear impression from the rhetoric of the first part of the book that this relationship has come to a definitive end. This dire scenario nevertheless gives way to an ebullient oracle of hope, in which the divine protector of Jerusalem assures the holy city that God remains committed to the relationship. Indeed, God will rejoice over this people with gladness and joyfully renew them in love. The divinely ordained response: “shout for joy,” “be glad and exult,” “be not discouraged.” Judgment, as merited as it may be, is never final in God’s intentions.

Despite the troubles Paul has found in Philippi, which largely stem from the inability of some in the community to overcome their differences and to be united in Christ, the Apostle urges all of them to “rejoice,” and again, “rejoice.” Human troubles and infidelities must be attended to, but in the end, they must not be allowed to bring anxiety, because “the Lord is near.” While the Philippians, along with all Christians, await the consummation of God’s promises, they should ground themselves in trust in the Lord, turning to God for all their needs. If they can do this, then instead of anxiety they will experience God’s peace, which will keep them safe in Christ Jesus.

Although all four Gospels feature John offering a baptism of repentance, only Luke gives us a sense of what such repentance looks like, and it is unsurprising to anyone familiar with Israel’s scriptures. When the crowd asks what they should do to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, John reminds them of God’s expectation that those who have should take care of those who have not (Deuteronomy 15:10–11; Tobit 4:7). Tax collectors, who made their fortunes by collecting more than the Romans required, should stop, and soldiers (and everyone else) should likewise obey the Law and avoid greed. When the Messiah comes, John insists, he will bring salvation to those who have reformed their lives, but judgment to those who have not.

Dec 05 2024

The Urge for Cleanliness

Sometimes a small thing can jolt a memory. I was startled one morning to discover that my COVID-19 bar of soap was gone. That brown-and-tan–striped soap bar had grown paper thin. I rubbed my hands together with it after breakfast and . . . it was gone.

For six weeks, I remember scrubbing my hands raw with that bar of soap. My hands had to be clean. Immaculate. Germ-free. The coronavirus with which I was infected must not pass on to my husband or to others. My hands had to be clean. Sterile. Spotless. It was urgent. It mattered.

Today, we celebrate that urgency for cleanness. Pure, true, immaculate—these are attributes of the Most Holy One. God is good. That statement sounds clichéd, but it is urgent. It matters: God is good. True. Pure. Holy . . . Good.

Since the earliest days of the church, the Incarnation has been urgent—that this good and holy God should become human? Oooh. With the people of faith throughout the centuries, we bow at that mystery. Who, then, was the young woman chosen to be God’s mother? It was urgent that she be made holy in order to house the Holy. The Mother of God had to be unstained from the beginning, clean and immaculate. Today we celebrate that. Mary is the new Eve, a startling counterpoint to the sordidness that has infected the human race. She is good. Clean. Pure.

That gives hope for you and me. God’s plan is to open the way of holiness to us as well. The viruses of life can pollute our lives. But the Spirit of God can fill us with the determination to grow toward goodness. We have to be holy. It is urgent. It matters. God is good. The pure of heart will see God. We want to see God. Come, Holy Spirit, Sanctifier, Purifier, scrub us clean!

Consider/Discuss

Sometimes the world feels dirty. Do you ever get tired of hearing lies and deceptions in the news, the planting of stories designed to sway you and public opinion? Where is wholesomeness? Where is goodness? Millions of dollars have gone into research into how to change people’s habits and minds. It can become manipulation. It can pollute us. Whom can we believe? In this Advent season, we seek to turn away from dirt, to be washed clean, to start anew. What is one concrete thing that we can do this week to make that happen?
When has God’s mercy freed you to see God present in your life?

Living and Praying with the Word

O Jesus, help us! You said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” We want to be pure of heart. We want to see you. As we celebrate this day of purity, help us to think about our habits and our way of life. Transform us so that we can live more simply and more purely. You call us to holiness. You call us to wholesomeness. Cleanse us from the dirt that clings so closely. Turn us away from sin. We want to follow you, you who are good and holy and pure. Wash us so we that we live in a way that is close to you.

Dec 05 2024

Scripture Study for

The scriptures tell us that in the beginning God made a “good” world and when humans entered the scene, they were at first well integrated into this harmonious creation. Indeed, Genesis portrays the relationship between God and humans as unusually intimate and personal. It is only when the snake induces the humans to doubt God’s good will toward them that the relationship is ruptured. The effects cascade as the intimacy between humans is damaged (passing the blame) and then the relationship between humans and the earth also becomes disharmonious (it is now difficult to till the soil). This tale suggests that human ignorance gives rise to suspicion and then to division, the cause and the effects of human sin.

The Letter to the Ephesians begins with a blessing of God, which emphasizes that what God has done in Christ is not an accident or “add-on” to a human history gone wrong, but is in fact part of a divine plan “before the foundation of the world.” Humans, despite the sins they will commit, have been loved by God from before all creation and have been destined to be “adopted” as God’s children from the beginning. Even human sin cannot derail the plan “of the one who accomplishes all things” as intended. That God’s desires for all humanity cannot be undone by millennia of sin attests to the glory and power of God.

Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, rendered in our Lectionary as “full of grace” (from the Latin gratia plena), can also be understood as “highly favored one,” and indeed, the angel assures the young woman that she has found favor with God. This should be understood not as an indication that Mary has somehow earned God’s favor, but that she has been “favored by God,” in the sense that she has been given a special role in God’s plan (as was the case also for Israel and Moses, neither of whom could be said to have earned God’s favor; see Exodus 33:16). The passage makes it clear that it is God’s unmerited choice of Mary to fulfill a long-standing plan, “prepared” well before she was born.

Dec 05 2024

Hanging on to Joyful Expectation

I remember sitting on the couch next to my grandma. She was ninety-two. I asked her, “Who would you like to see when you get to heaven?” Her eyes behind her glasses brimmed with tears. “I would like to see Bobby,” she said. Bobby was born when my mother was four years old. He died six months later. His death was a deep chasm in my grandma’s life. More than sixty years later, she had not forgotten her baby boy. She still ached to reach across that rift to touch him.

John the Baptist knows about deep valleys. The Judean wilderness is a series of parallel gorges, many more than a thousand feet deep. Some precipices are sheer rock, scary to look down.

In the first reading, Baruch also knows those scary cliffs; he prophesies that God will fill those same valleys. The Jews had sown a trail of tears on their way to exile in Babylon. Baruch reassures the captives that God will level out those rough roads and bring them back home. They’re in a bad place. What is coming? They don’t know. But their hope is in the One who can make that pathway straight. It is God who will do it. Their tears will be in the past. Joy will be their future.

My grandma died when she was ninety-four and a half. I believe that her tears of sorrow have turned into tears of joy. I hope she sees Bobby. Across the rift of death, God has healed her past and has given her a future.

In Advent, what is coming? Jesus, the baby born to be king, is coming. The chasm between heaven and earth has been leveled. That is the source of our hope. We are called to be Advent people. We hang on to joyful expectation, whether we have five or thirty or sixty more years still to come.

Consider/Discuss

As winter deepens into darkness, the radiance of Advent still shines. The flame of the second candle on the Advent wreath flickers to tell us that the Savior is coming, coming, coming: that God’s best is yet to come. For what are you waiting in joyful hope?
Life’s valleys can be steep. Sometimes, we may feel as though we have to cross them all by ourselves. When we hear today’s call to repentance, to make the pathways straight, it can feel heavy, as though we have to get better all by ourselves. Yet both prophets say that it is God who levels the mountains and raises the valleys. Do you walk alone? How can God’s grace lift you and help you through the course of your life?

Living and Praying with the Word

Lord, we bring you the chasms and the deep valleys in our lives. Sometimes it feels as though we could fall off of one of those scary cliffs. Lift us with your love. Lead us with your glory. Strengthen our courage to be Advent people, to hang on to hope—this year, next year, even if it takes sixty years. Heal our past. Give us confidence for the future. You alone are our Advent strength. O come, O come, Emmanuel!