Fr. Bill Carroll – Second Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2024
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our son Danny came home this week. Tracey and I are dissatisfied with the way his group home was handling his health care. He has had a few illnesses where they didn’t take him to the doctor right away, and an injury that they didn’t document properly, or at all. And so now, we are working with the regulators and exercising our responsibility as his parents.
It’s a difficult transition for our family, but a welcome one. Tracey and I were at the end of our rope when we turned to the group home for help. But we were also missing our son–every single day. And, for now at least, Danny has come home. This last week, we’ve been living out of a motel room, making our home safe for him to live in again. It’s been a time of rapid change. And we felt a bit like refugees–moving in between places, with everything in trash bags and everything in flux. We have memories of his violent outbursts to contend with, and he’s given me a few new scars on my hands. But we are committed to doing what we can for him.
I say this today, because our lessons have to do with homecoming. In the Gospel, John quotes from the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, which begins: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people…” It’s the same prophet that Jesus and the early Church turn to, again and again, to justify God’s mission to outsiders. In its original context, it had to do with bringing God’s People home, when they were refugees in Babylon.
In the first-century ministries of John and Jesus, it had to do with God’s preferential option for the poor of the land and others deemed unclean, when the Romans and their collaborators, many of them named by name in this chapter, presumed to speak for God. But, in later parts of the New Testament, this concern for outsiders is applied to the mission to the Gentiles.
For Isaiah, as for Jesus and John, God is the one true God of all reality. God is the Creator and Redeemer of us all. And so, when God calls a particular person or group of people, God doesn’t call us because we’re special. God calls us because we need help. God calls us to make us his own. God wants us to follow his ways—to establish justice and share his love with other people. We are to be a light to the nations—a blessing for the peoples of the earth.
God calls sinners and people with questionable occupations, alongside the righteous, to repent. God calls people with low social status and little money or power, alongside the great ones of the earth, to repent. He calls all of us to turn back to him and back to each other—to forsake the ways of violence, to stop mistreating our neighbors, to live in his justice and steadfast love—so that all flesh (all flesh) might see the salvation of God.
It starts with John the Baptist, that fierce preacher in the wilderness. John condemns our business as usual. He condemns all of us who hide behind the outward forms of religion, especially when we use our faith as a weapon or use it to hide our hypocrisy and sin. He urges us all to turn back to God—to come back to God empty-handed, which is the only way that we can.
When asked who he is, John tells the crowd that he is a voice crying out in the wilderness: “prepare the way of the Lord.” Then, he continues to cite the words of Isaiah:
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. And the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together…
Advent is a time when we wait for God to show us the Way. We are waiting for the Son of God. His simple faith, his hope in God’s Kingdom, and his love for all people shows us the way that we must walk, if we would get right with God.
That’s a very different hope from what many folks are selling today. They are selling a halfway hope that God will save some of us. That God will save the right kinds of people–those who are worthy or righteous or clean. Those who look and believe and behave the ways we do. Those who share our history or cultural traditions. But that is not the Good News of Jesus. The Good News is a message from God, whose ways are not our own. God is coming to reclaim his world.
John came to show us the Way. He shows us God leveling high mountains and filling deep valleys, to prepare our way home. He shows us the God who wants a relationship with every last creature (every last one of us), especially those who are looked down upon or left behind. And so, the prostitutes and the sinners come to John–just as they flocked to Jesus. And so too, the poor, the unclean, and the misfits come to John–just like they flocked to Jesus.
This is Good News for when we find ourselves far from God. It is Good News for when we are looking for forgiveness and new life–for when our hearts are broken or weighed down, or when we’ve made a mess of our lives. It is for when we are defeated and discouraged–and find it hard to carry on.
It’s not an easy Gospel. Malachi speaks of a refining, purifying fire. John the Baptist talks about being baptized “with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” God does not offer us cheap grace or easy forgiveness. God does not leave us unchanged. But, in every time and place, no matter what has happened, no matter what we have suffered or done, God shows us our way home.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,*
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation *
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God *
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, *
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Amen.