Second Sunday of Advent

Advent gives us images that help us move into the celebration of Christmas.  The season begins by reminding us that Jesus, the risen Lord, is coming back and we wait on him with patient endurance.  The focus on what happened the first Christmas only comes at the end of Advent.  We are called to live in hope of Jesus’ return because he told us so, and he is trustworthy.

During these middle Sundays of the season John the Baptist emerges as the primary figure, with his call to turn to God, to repent, for the kingdom is at hand.  These Sundays remind us that Christ continues to come, even now.  He comes to us in the everyday events of life.  He comes today as well as yesterday, now as well as tomorrow.

The Book of Baruch was written for a people who had grown tired of waiting on God’s coming to save them.  They were a people who had been taken into exile, uprooted from their land.  This passage from the book speaks a message of consolation and hope.  A voice calls to Mother Jerusalem, weeping over her children, children snatched from her arms, some killed, others taken off to a foreign land.

The voice rings out: Change your clothes!  Take off the robes of mourning and misery.  Put on the cloak of justice; wear the crown that shows the glory of God’s name.  Watch, for your children are coming home.  Look to the east.  God is bringing them back.  The author of this book was giving his listeners, a people scattered far from home, a word to carry them into the future.

Luke, writing for a community of Gentile Christians, is also giving hope.  At a time when Rome’s heel was on Israel’s neck, God’s Word came bellowing forth from the desolate wilderness.  John was God’s trumpet blast, calling the people to be washed in the waters of repentance, turning to God for the forgiveness of their sins.  John was the embodiment of one of whom the prophet Isaiah had spoken: the voice proclaiming that God was coming, God not only came in the past, and is not only to come in the future – God was coming now.

Advent gives us images to remind us that such has been and continues to be the case.  Our God continues to come to us in ways that are mysterious.  God comes to us, brings us together, even in conditions of great sorrow, and sometimes in most unexpected ways.

In the midst of great horror and sadness, the presence of God comes, moving people toward one another.  The movement of those women toward a grieving mother – movements of life, nurturing life in the moment.  And in those moments God moved among the people, bringing them together in grief and sorrow, in need and desperation, in a communion of the helpless, through each other, God was embracing them.

God moves among us these days, bringing to completion the work begun at baptism.  In the midst of the horrors of our time – ISIS, Charleston, Roseburg, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino, the out-of-season illnesses, the famines, the unnecessary deaths – we can still find the presence of the Spirit of God, moving through the actions of those reaching out in compassion and care.

Today we come to this holy place to see God move.  The Spirit of God moves among us, turning print on the page into the living Word of God, changing bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, transforming us into the Body of Christ sent out into the world.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor