A Homily for the 1st Sunday in Advent (B)
It must have been eight or nine years ago, either the Thanksgiving or Christmas before I enter the seminary, and it was probably the most frightening experience I have had in a car. I had been to my sister’s in-laws’ house in St. Louis for the holiday dinner, and I was driving back to my home in Columbia, MO. I wanted to get home to write some lecture notes. I knew that the weather report said that there was a severe snowstorm coming, but I – in my arrogance, or pride, or just plain foolishness – thought that I could beat the storm. I was feeling pretty good about my decision until I got about 10 miles from my house when the storm hit. Now I went to school in Illinois, so I have seen some pretty bad blizzards, but I never experienced a storm quite as bad as this one. It was a complete “white-out.” I could not see more than 10 feet in front of my car, and could not see the road at all. I had enough wits about me to immediately slow down, but I did not know what I was going to do. There is not much in central Missouri; home was the closest safe place to get off the highway, and I was afraid that even if I could find the side of the road without falling into a ditch, that I would become hopelessly snowbound. I was afraid of either freezing to death on the side of the road, or getting hit by someone who just would not be able to see me. As I weighed my options it happened. Suddenly there was a tractor-trailer in front of me, which I nearly rear-ended. Needless to say, at first that only increased my anxiety, but then I realized that I could just follow him to my exit. It was the most frightening ride of my life.
While most of you probably have not been as foolish as I to drive in such a blizzard, I am sure that most of you know what it is like to eagerly strain your eyes looking for home at the end of a wearisome, maybe even stressful journey. In the pitch darkness a few miles may seem like a hundred miles, and we wonder just when we will reach our destination and safety.
The Israelites to whom the Prophet Isaiah was writing which we heard in our first reading knew quite well that sense of darkness, that straining with the eyes to see their destination, that longing for home which most of us have experienced. The Israelites to whom Isaiah addresses this prophecy had been sent into exile by the Babylonians, their nation had been destroyed, and they were wondering how things could have gotten so bad. Of course they only had to look in a mirror to see the cause of their woe. It was their own pride, their own arrogance, their own sin that caused the confusion and strife that they were experiencing.
Thousands of years later we are not all that different than those ancient Israelites. Our own sins – stemming from our own pride & arrogance – leave us feeling just as confused and woeful. We are very aware that our world is fallen in sin and alienated from its creator and master.
Yet all is not lost. Again we should learn from our ancestors in the faith. The Israelites to whom Isaiah speaks are not lost in despair. The passage we heard today is filled not only with a humble admission of guilt, but also with a soaring hope that God’s compassion and mercy would overcome their tendency to wander from their convictions. They lived in the hope and expectation that God would redeem them from their sin. They did not know when their Savior would come, but they knew that He would deliver them from their sins.
This attitude of expectation, of hope, is one that the Church encourages in us, her children, permanently. The Church sees this attitude of expectation and hope as an essential part of our Christian life that we should still be looking forward. Yes, the Savior has come. Jesus has conquered sin and death, and has established His kingdom. Yet we must still be looking forward; watching for God’s coming into the sin, confusion, and alienation in our lives, in our world. We should be living a joyful hope for the final completion of God’s kingdom that will never end.
During Advent, the Church encourages us “to take the shepherd-folk for our guides, and imagine ourselves traveling with them, at dead of night, straining our eyes towards that chink of light which streams out, we know, from the cave at Bethlehem” (R.A. Knox, Sermons on Advent, December 21, 1947).
