Second Sunday in Advent

December 8                NOTES FOR REFLECTION             Second Sunday in Advent

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

Theme:  There are so many possibilities in this Season of Advent – and for this particular Sunday!  If we want to focus on the enigmatic figure of John the Baptist (second only, perhaps, to Peter as the most fascinating of all the supporting cast we find in the drama of Christ) we might go for "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness": or something a little more original and shocking such as "The Jolly Thin Man".  [Think Santa Parade here – and by the way did you notice that this year Auckland shifted theirs from the Season of Advent to the Kingdom Season – think of the theological implications of that!]  Or should the focus be on the great Prophet of the Advent, Isaiah, with his extraordinary vision of the restoration of Edenic peace?  Something like "Shoot, Root, and Fruit" might be both catchy and accurate.  Or perhaps we might want to address the idea of starting all over again, as we get into another liturgical year, in which case "Starting Over" or "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" might do.  We are often told that this Season is one of preparation, though we might forget that that has nothing to do with Christmas shopping, holidaying planning or other worldly challenges of that kind.  It has everything to do with being open, alert and aware to meet the God who keeps on coming to us and waiting for us to see and hear him everywhere, from a stable in Bethlehem to a mall in George Street, Dunedin.

Background.  In some ways The Season of Advent serves as a brief summary of the story we are about to rehearse all over again.  Like any good story it has a beginning, a middle, and an end – it has a coherent plot.  It is a time to summarise the story so far, to clarify the story as we are now experiencing it, and to assure us that if we continue until the end all will be revealed, and it will all make sense.  Isaiah is the perfect contributor to such an introduction.  Speaking to the people of his time, he draws on the past, and envisions the future.  St Paul, too, emphasises that we learn from the past in order to understand the present and to have hope in the future.  And then John the Baptist comes on to the stage to remind us that this story is inter-active – we are not called to be spectators but active participants.  We are, as it were, dramatis personae – members of a cast that is already too vast to count.

As I have started into this Season of Advent I have found the following passage from Thomas Keating very helpful:

 Christian life is a process of spiritual growth and transformation.  Each new level of growth brings with it a gradual or sudden burst of understanding, a kind of awakening.  The meaning of the Gospel changes as we change.  This growth takes place without rejecting the knowledge that went before and manifests itself through ever-increasing understanding of the example and teaching of Jesus.

I was particularly struck by that third sentence – "The meaning of the Gospel changes as we change."  That's a particularly daring thing to say, I think.  Surely the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus Christ – never changes – isn't it a message for all people of all times?  Yes – but all of us who have spent some years pondering the various texts will have had that experience of finding something in a particular text that we had never noticed before.  It's as if someone has changed the text since we last read it.  But, of course, the text is as is was the last time we read it – it is we ourselves who have changed – changed in our openness to the guidance of the Spirit as he leads us further and deeper into all truth; changed in our lessening of our resistance to that truth, too.  And changed in our willingness to let go of old certainties to embrace new possibilities and insights.

The other phrase in the passage from Father Keating that strikes such a chord with me is his reference to "a gradual or sudden burst of understanding".  That's exactly how it is in so many aspects of our lives, including our faith journeys.  Day by day, month by month our growth may be so slight and slow as to be imperceptible – and then suddenly a particular insight flashes before us and we start seeing things in a new and deeper way.  As with an individual, so with creation as a whole.  In fact, I was recently reading a book about the evolution of the cosmos by an author who is a devout Christian.  One of the exercises he invited his readers to attempt was to imagine the "time" before the Big Bang! (Go on, try it!)  If our scientists (and the author of Genesis 1) are right the whole of creation as we have it today had a beginning.  So what can we say about that which preceded the beginning?

After I had completely bamboozled myself trying to perform what the author had described as this simple exercise, I suddenly remembered that when I was about seven or eight, I became very interested in the problem of where I was before I was born.   My ever helpful sister told me the bit about being in "Mother's tummy", but that was a category-error on my sister's part.  I was not interested in the biological issues surrounding conception and birth: my inquiry was much larger than that.  Where was I before I came into existence?  Even if my sister's completely unlikely story was true, what about before that?  Before I had somehow got into Mother's tummy, where was I and what was I doing?  Even at that tender age I seemed to have an intuition that to understand our lives we need to know our history and even our prehistory.

That is surely the case with our faith.  Yes, it is true that in Christ God is doing a new thing – the Incarnation certainly qualifies as "a new thing".  And yet it is a new thing that only makes sense in the story as a whole – it could only occur in Israel – to a Jewish woman – in the history of that people.  It only makes sense in the course of a history (which is another word for "story") that includes Abraham and Moses and David and Isaiah and John the Baptist.  In that sense the Incarnation is both one small step and one giant leap – it continues an old journey but with a great new leap forward.  And there's a real sense in which those great men of God ARE our ancestors – their spiritual genes form our spirits.

"Advent" means "coming".  It is a Season of One Coming, not several.  The Incarnation began with Jesus' conception and birth and it has been continuing ever since.  Along the way there have been many steps and occasional leaps, but it is all one journey, one path that leads to the One God.  If our readings and reflections tell us nothing else, they surely should tell us that – this Advent and throughout this new liturgical year.

Isaiah.  We begin with this typically wonderful passage from Isaiah, and his telling image of the stump of a tree.  Visualise that for a moment before going any further.  To all outward appearance it is dead, the tree is no more.  But then a shoot appears from the side –a sign, we might say, of new life – but it is not.  A sprouting seed might be described as new life, perhaps, but a shoot from a tree stump cannot be anything than a manifestation of the life that is in the stump itself.  The tree is not dead.  The one life is continuing.  Isaiah says this stump is the "stump of Jesse" – not of David, as we might have expected.  The shoot, like David himself, received life from the same source.  But fast forward to verse 10 and notice the sleight of mind Isaiah has pulled on us.  No longer are we dealing with a shoot on the stump of Jesse: now we have gone deeper (literally): the one who is the shoot is also the root.  [Isaiah had already mentioned the root in verse 1, but it doesn't seem compelling at that point.]  The life that is coming into the world is the life that has passed through Jesse: the Messiah both precedes and succeeds Jesse.  Jesus is both Jesse's descendant and ancestor – precisely because, as God, he is eternal.  All life is one life – with a shared pre-history, history, present and future.  And what a future it is!  In brief, the Adamic curse is removed and the Edenic unity of all things is restored.  That is the vision of Advent we look forward to, which arises from all that has gone before from the beginning of all things until today and beyond.

Taking It Personally.

• Try to imagine what was before the beginning of all things, when only God was.  What words come to you?  If God is love (as St John says), can we not say that all things emerged out of love?
• Reflect on the image of the tree stump.  What new insights come to you?
• Read verse 2.  Notice the coming together of the spiritual and the human, which points both to the Incarnation and to Pentecost.  Ponder the gifts of the Spirit in this verse, and their practical application in verses 3 to 5.
• Read Genesis 1 (noticing particularly verse 30), and then ponder verses 6 and 7 of this passage from Isaiah.  What do you make of that?
• Read verse 8.  Think about the serpent as the traditional enemy of humankind.  Yet there is time coming when even the most vulnerable baby will be in no danger of harm from snakes.  Do you believe that – truly believe?
• In verses 9 and 10 notice how the Incarnation – the coming of God expands from Israel to all peoples and nations.  With that in mind pray the Lord Prayer's slowly and earnestly.
• Finish with prayers of thanksgiving for all that God has done, is doing and will do.

 

Romans.  St Paul begins this passage by emphasising the importance of knowing our past, and learning its lessons, for the past is the basis on which we build our hope for the future.  He reminds us that we are in the adventure of life together – if God is bringing all things into unity, we must ourselves seek ever greater unity with others.  ["Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."]  Then he turns his attention once more to emphasise that the Gospel is for all people, Jew and Gentile alike.  This was a revolutionary idea to the people of his time; and yet he is able to show that this message has been in their Scriptures all along.  Faithful Jews would have been very familiar with the Psalms, and yet most of them had simply not "seen or heard" the many references to the Gentiles, including the ones he now cites to them.  This is a classic illustration of what I was talking about earlier, and what Fr Keating has written about on many occasions: we tend to filter out those things that contradict our present ideas and challenge us to change them.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

·        Can you recall an occasion of being surprised to find a word or phrase in a passage of Scripture that you had never noticed before?  Give thanks because that is a sign of spiritual growth on your part.  Ask the Spirit to continue to lead you deeper into the truth of that passage of Scripture.

·        Do you truly value the Old Testament as part of your own faith history, or do you tend to be dismissive of it?

·        What might you do to better keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace within your local community of faith in this liturgical year?

 

Matthew.  Enter John the Baptist with a loud crash!  There is nothing subtle about him, but there is, I think, about Matthew's approach in identifying him.  In one sense we might take from verses 1 and 2 that John needs no introduction: he simply appears and starts preaching.  But what about verse 3?  It seems to me that there is an element of incarnation – of embodiment or enfleshment – here.  The voice has become a person: Matthew's introduction says that this man, John, and his message is the "voice" Isaiah fore-heard centuries ago.  [The fore-runner of the incarnate Word of God is the incarnate Voice of God, we might say.]   Matthew also seems to hint in verse 4 at a "re-incarnation" of Elijah.  Be all that as it may, John drew the crowds – testimony to the widespread spiritual hunger of the time.  And he was no sweet-talking crowd-pleaser: when the religious elite turned up he didn't hesitate to challenge them.  But his message was clear:  there is One who is coming who will baptise, not with water, but with Spirit and fire.

 

Taking It Personally.

 

·        Another great passage for Ignatian prayer.  In your imagination put yourself in the crowd at the Jordan.  Why are you there?  What are you seeking?  What is your first impression of John?  Listen to him as he rips into the Pharisees and the Sadducees: how do you feel about his treatment of them?  How would you describe his attitude towards them?  Shouldn't he welcome all-comers?

·        What might the Church learn from his approach – particularly in respect of baptism?  Do you favour an "open-door policy" for parents seeking baptism for their infants, or a more challenging and searching approach?

·        This Advent and Christmas period, for whom are you waiting?  Someone who will turn your life upside-down, call upon you to change, and offer the gift of Spirit and fire?  Or is the God you seek more of a Santa figure?

·        Re-read the quotation above from Thomas Keating.  Review the liturgical year just past.  Has it been a period of "spiritual growth and transformation" for you?

·        Now look ahead.  What are your goals of spiritual growth and transformation for the next year?