Fourth Sunday of Advent

The scriptures give us today, brothers and sisters, two stories, and one image to prepare us for the coming of the Lord we will celebrate in only a few hours. Incidentally, I want to salute you, the faithful remnant, who have come to celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Advent on the very eve of Christmas. Your presence is not, I suspect, not so much from obligation, but from love, love of the mystery we celebrate in these days, love for God’s word made flesh who made his dwelling among us.

A thousand years before the birth of Jesus, after many trials and tribulations, King David finally established himself in a new capital, Jerusalem, whose name means “city of peace.”  There he dwelt securely on Mount Zion, in a place difficult for enemies to assail. He grew rich, and contented, yet he was also anxious: for his future, for his family, for his house. At the same time, he feared that he was not paying attention enough to the presence of the Lord signified in the Ark of the Covenant that was housed in a tent, “while I”, he said, “dwell in a house of cedar.” Builder that he was, he decided to build a splendid temple, a house for the Lord to dwell in.

Yet the prophet Nathan heard a message, an oracle from the lord for David, and delivered it to him: “I will build a house for you, my son whom I plucked from pasture and the care of the flock; you and your house will be a royal house, a holy priesthood, a people set apart. Mercy shall come from this house, and salvation, and redemption and peace.”

We know that in the centuries that followed, the physical house of David, his house of cedar, was destroyed, his family divided and scattered. The logic of the world seemed once again more powerful than the illogic of God, as the city of peace fell to invaders and stood empty for the better part of a century.

Returning from their exile in Babylon, all the people had was a house built of hope: hope in the mercy of God, hope in salvation and redemption and peace that are the gifts of God.

And so they waited for their merciful savior, their redeemer, their prince of peace, expecting, as people always do, the wrong thing. They looked for a general, a satrap, a commander who would make them a super power. What Elizabeth encountered Judea, what the Shepherds encountered at Bethlehem, was entirely different:  they encountered Jesus, Mary’s son, God made flesh in the dividing cells within a peasant woman’s body

Wisdom built herself a house in that body, within the house of our shared humanity. The spirit of the lord overshadowed Mary, and after her gracious assent: “let it be done to me according to your Word” the building of that human house began, cell upon cell, week upon day, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called ‘Emmanuel,’ God is with us.”

The house of his incarnation was a peasant woman’s body; the house of his birth, not a gilded palace or the Kremlin or the Vatican, but a stable, surrounded, we are told, but dumb, adoring animals, his courtiers rough shepherds. The house of his life among us was the body he shared with us, the shared house of our humanity, gift of his mother’s generosity.

And so he entered our world of nights and days, of rooms and open spaces, of meals and of hunger shared, of friendship and rejection. John tells us “the word became flesh, and pitched his tent among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only-begotten son, full of grace and truth.”

That is what we celebrate in this season, even as we do so in the contradictory context of this meal, recalling his last supper among us, his gift to us of this most powerful sign:  the sign of his body and blood we share. We do not stay in Bethlehem, as beautiful as that part of the story is, but we follow him, even to a hill on the side of Mount Zion, a hill called Calvary, and to a cold stone tomb, and into new life dawning on the first day of the week. We follow him in this transformed creation, transformed yet far from completed, far from perfect, and seek to embrace our role as builders of a new house of justice and peace where all are welcome, where all can sit down at table together.

Wisdom has built herself a house, and we are that house, that temple, that place where God dwells among us. Come, let us adore him.

Fr. Tom Lucas, S.J.