Homily for 3rd Sunday of Advent Year C 2016-2017
Isaiah 35:1-6; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11
Introduction
Few of us like waiting, especially waiting
for two hours at the Doctor's Office or at the DMV. We don't like waiting in heavy traffic or
waiting to get on or off a plane.
When Children travelling on a long road
trip keep asking "are we there yet?" "are we there yet?" I
believe they are saying what we adults are too grown up to admit, that we want things
to happen by yesterday and not in some distant future.
Scripture and Theology
It seems that even John the Baptist was
tired of waiting for the Messiah. He was
growing impatient to know if Jesus was the promised Saviour. That is why, as we heard in the gospel, he
sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you
the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
Now for you and me, who have the advantage
of 2000 years of Christianity, John's question might seem rather stupid; after
all everybody knows that Jesus is the Messiah.
But John the Baptist wasn’t really sure.
Although they probably knew each other since their mothers were cousins,
and although John had baptized Jesus, still he had some doubts. Perhaps what he heard about Jesus, his
humility, his teachings about mercy, did not fit his picture of the Messiah,
the Saviour who would bring about the Kingdom of God. And so he just had to
know: “Are you the one who is to come, or
should we look for another?”
If John’s question sounds unnecessary to us,
the response of Jesus might also sound a little strange. Jesus tells the disciples of John: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the
blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear,
the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them." Perhaps the disciples of John, as they
returned to him asked themselves: "what a round-about way to answer a
straightforward question."
And yet when they told John the Baptist
what Jesus had said, he must have been relieved; finally the waiting was over. This is because, anybody familiar with the
Old Testament like John was, would have heard in the answer of Jesus those key
phrases that were the telltale markers of the Messiah.
In fact, we heard those phrases spoken in
today’s first reading from the Prophet Isaiah.
Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel at the time of their
exile. They too were impatient for the
restoration of their Kingdom and kept asking: "When are we getting back
home? When will God fulfil his promise to
save us?"
Isaiah basically told them to be patient because
good things come to those who wait. He
used two images to explain those good things that would be coming:
1.
First, he told them that God would
work on the land itself, turning the desert and parched land into fertile and
blooming soil. That land, most of which
is desert, he said "will bloom with
abundant flowers," like the fertile coastal land of Lebanon and
Carmel, the area we know as Haifa today.
Isaiah was basically promising them something like the beautiful garden
of Eden as it was before the Fall of Adam and Eve.
2.
Secondly, besides God improving
the land, Isaiah promised that when the restoration would come, God would bring
healing of body and soul. Not only would
the emotionally weak will be strengthened, but also "the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared; . . .
the lame [will] leap like a stag, then the tongue of the mute will sing."
That is why when John the Baptist asks
Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come,
or should we look for another?” Jesus answers the question by pointing to the
same things, which Isaiah had promised that the Messiah would do: the blind
regaining their sight, the laming walk, the deaf hearing. And Jesus adds a few more good things of his
own: “lepers are cleansed, . . . the dead
are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.”
John the Baptist must have been satisfied
with this answer, for he sent no more messengers to Jesus, and in fact his
disciples became disciples of Jesus.
Christian Life
Like I said at the beginning, it is part of
our human condition to be impatient about everyday things. But we can also impatient about spiritual
things. Perhaps you and I have asked
Jesus our own version of John's question: "Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another Messiah?"
·
For example, because of the
terminal sickness of a family member or a friend, we might be a little
impatient with Jesus, asking him if he is the Messiah, why is he doing nothing
about it?
·
Or when we experience the unfortunate
death of a young person for example, in our despair we might wonder, where Jesus
was in all this!
·
For some us, our doubts might
come from frustration with the way the world is going: wars and division, a
culture of death as seen in senseless murders and the scourge of abortion, a world
refugee crisis of enormous proportions.
These things might lead us to ask what happened to the promise of Jesus
to be with us until the end of time!
We can turn to the Letter of St. James
which we read in the second reading, advising us: "Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord." James suggested that we follow the example of
the farmer who has to wait patiently and diligently for months to receive his
harvest. James is not suggesting that
our pain as Christians is any less because we are Christians. But he is suggesting that we bear it
differently because we draw comfort from the Lord's promise, that all will be fulfilled
when the Kingdom is finally restored.
Similarly, the promise of a brighter future
given them by prophets like Isaiah allowed the exiled people of Israel to have
hope that they would return home one day, and therefore allowed them to bear
the paid of their exile. Similarly as we
go through life's difficulties, we might also draw comfort from knowing that
this world as we know it is not all that there is. Better things are yet to come, the kind of
life after this one that we can only describe with imperfect images.
And yet as we look to the future with hope,
we must also look around us today. Did
you notice what Jesus told the disciples of John the Baptist? "Go and tell John what you hear and see . . .
." In other words, Jesus reassured
John by pointing to the signs of his work already taking place there and then:
the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead and the preaching to the poor.
When we ask Jesus our own version of John's
question, when we question where he is, he just might say to us: look around at
the many good people caring for others in my name, doing good in my name.
·
Look at those Italian nuns who
have stayed in Somalia and care for the sick, when everybody left that war-torn
country and many others.
·
Look at those Christian parents
who not only give an example of fidelity in marriage to their children, but
also raise them in the faith.
·
Look at the increasing numbers
of young men and women joining the seminary and religious life.
Conclusion
It seems like just as we have no choice in
how long we wait at the Doctor's Office or in traffic, we also have no choice
in how long we wait for the Lord to satisfy our deepest longings. In both cases, however, we have a choice in how
we wait.
Do we wait in hope or despair? Do we wait by keeping busy or by being
idle? Can some good come out of our
waiting?
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