A homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021
Mi 5:1-4a, Heb 10:5-10, Lk 1:39-45
As the Advent season of waiting nears its end for 2021, one key question remains:
What are we waiting for? Or for whom?
Certainly not Godot.
And, in truth, not Jesus.
Not the man from Galilee who walked the Earth two millennia ago. He was born, he died, he rose from the dead and he ascended into Heaven. Those tasks were one-and-done. Christmas is not Dominus Do-Over.
We’re not waiting for the Christ who dwells in every child of God today. That Christ is present every day of the year.
And it’s not the Second Person of the Holy Trinity whose salvific work continues eternally.
We’re waiting for something or someone else.
And yes, we’re waiting for Christmas, but not because Adonai has gone to Cancun for a couple of weeks and is due back on December 25 when Santa or Delta Airlines flies by.
God’s omnipresence is constant, eternal, alive. God continually showers us with presents.
We celebrate at Christmas with gifts to one another to recall receiving one of the Almighty’s great gifts — Emmanuel. God With Us. God Always With Us.
And another incredible gift: ourselves, our lives, as part of God’s great Creation.
What more could we ask for? What more could we hope for?
So: What are we waiting for?
There are people who would argue that we are looking toward the Second Coming of Christ, but it’s a real stretch to link that to the babe in the manger. That baby was born priest, prophet and king, but he wasn’t ready to judge the world. Not at that point in his earthly life, as represented by the Feast of the Nativity.
When Christ returns in a timeless form, when he will separate the sheep from the goats and grant each their rewards or punishments, the event will be far more trumpeted than the humble birth of a weary teenager’s son far from home.
Angels we have heard on high notwithstanding.
So if we sorta-kinda have been waiting for Jesus at Christmas, but we also know that Jesus was, is and always will be with us, then what’s the answer?
We’re waiting for us.
We’re waiting for ourselves to have an aha moment.
We’re waiting for us to act.
We’re waiting for the God-given wisdom and strength to follow Christ’s radical path, to make straight the roads and smooth them out while we’re at it. To flatten mountains and use the gravel to fill in canyons.
Figuratively and metaphorically, of course.
Because familiar physical obstacles like hills and valleys and treacherously twisty highways are emblematic of the ways we humans make life harder for each other the more we perceive differences. The more we plaster labels on one group or another. The more we rank people into castes and shove them to the margins.
The more we hate in a season of love.
When Christmas rolls around on Saturday, we’ll have had nearly four full weeks to get ready, to carve out quiet time amid the BOGOs and $100-off deals, to reflect on how we can make this new year in Christ and the new year of 2022 a year when we reach out in love. When we put love into much-needed action.
The God of Abraham, Moses and the Apostles — God Who Is Love — gave us a roadmap. We have the Law and the Prophets, the Good News and the Letters, even the apocalyptic Revelation.
We have each other, for we are Church.
We have the Eucharist, yet another of God’s great gifts.
We know what we are called by God to do, and as Christmas bells ring out, the yuletide joy and the Holy Spirit will lift us from our easy chairs to live the Gospel. To live the Gospel actively, decisively, every day in every way.
So what are we waiting for?
