Second Sunday in Advent, Year B. Is. 40: 1-5, 9-11; Mark 1:1-8.
AIM: To help the hearers repent, and to show the
Spirit’s role in repentance.
“John was clothed in camel’s hair ...
He fed on locusts and wild honey.”
Not exactly
the kind of character we’d care to meet socially — let alone invite into our
homes. Today we’d call someone like that a drop-out, a hippie perhaps;
certainly a food nut. Can someone so bizarre really have anything to say to us
at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Let’s look at what John did say. His message has two parts. John proclaimed:
— “A
baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins;” and —
— the coming of one
mightier than himself, who would baptize not with water but with the Holy
Spirit.
In placing this message before us on
this second Advent Sunday, the Church is saying that it is relevant — and important. Let’s see why.
Repentance
means “turning around,” reversing the direction of our lives. We come into this world turned in on
ourselves. In infancy and early childhood, what I want, right now, is
more important than anything else. Some of you will surely remember celebrated
baby doctor of an earlier generation, Dr. Spock. Like some of you, perhaps, I was
raised on Dr. Spock’s principles. That may help you understand why I’ve turned
out so badly. In one of his books Spock tells about a two-year old who was a
little angel, until he was put down to sleep. Then he screamed his lungs out.
Up to a certain age, we can’t do anything about this self-centeredness. It is
inborn. We can’t even hide it. It is there for the whole world to see.
Part of growing up is learning to
overcome our self-centeredness. To do that
we must
admit that is there: that I am not the person I ought to be and want to be;
that I fall short of what God wanted
me to be when, through my parents, he gave me the precious gift of life.
The people who came to John to be
baptized in the Jordan River were making that
fundamental admission: “They acknowledged their sins,” Mark’s gospel tells us.
That meant — as acknowledgment of sin must always mean — facing up to their
brokenness; admitting that their lives were a tangle of loose ends and failed
resolutions. That is the first step in repentance: admitting that we fall
short, that our lives are disordered.
Many people get that far. But then
they think that is up to them to mend
their brokenness. By trying harder they think they can clean up their act, get
it all together, as we sometimes say today. The second part of John’s message demolishes such optimistic ideas
about repairing our disordered lives through our own willpower. “One mightier
than I is coming after me,” John said. “I have baptized you with water; he will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Acknowledging our sins, admitting our
self-centeredness, is only the first step, John is saying. We need to
acknowledge something more: that the disorder in our lives can be put right
only by a power greater than our own;
a power from outside ourselves. This
is the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
Are you completely satisfied with your life? If you knew that you were to
stand before the Lord in judgment tonight, is there nothing you would regret,
nothing that you would want changed? If there really is nothing, then the
gospel of Jesus Christ is not for you. For this gospel is good news: the almost
unbelievably good news that God loves people who are not satisfied with their lives; who — when they remember that they
must stand before the Lord in judgment one day — are weighed down by all the
things they wish they had done differently, or not done at all. Only for such
people does John’s Advent message of repentance make any sense at all.
And for such people -- for all of us
who are not completely satisfied with
our lives, the second half of John’s message – about a power greater than our
own – is as important as the first part: the call to repentance. The changes
that need to take place in our lives will not occur without our best effort —
true. But our best effort alone is
insufficient. Thinking that we must
first get our act together before God will love us and bless us leads either to
pride, or to despair. Either we persuade ourselves that we have got our act together, and now it is time for God to reward us
for our efforts — which is pride. Or
we grow so discouraged at constantly falling short that we fall into
despair.
The gospel message, Christ’s good news
of God’s freely given love, is for those who know that they don’t have their
act together; who have tried and tried again to get it together, and failed
time after time; but who recognize that there is One and One alone who can do for them what they never do for
themselves: make straight in the wasteland of their lives a highway for Himself.
To accomplish this, Christ has given
us a special sacrament: the sacrament of reconciliation or penance. Here is
what the Catechism says about this sacrament: “Christ is at work in each of the
sacraments. He personally addresses every sinner: ‘My son, your sins are
forgiven.’ He is the physician tending each one of the sick who need him to
cure them. He raises them up and reintegrates them into fraternal communion.
Personal confession is thus the form most expressive of reconciliation with God
and with the Church.” (1484)
I finished my Christmas shopping
this week and got my gifts in the mail. And I went to confession. I hope you
will too. If you recognize the need for the healing, purifying touch of God’s
Holy Spirit; if you are able to admit that your own efforts alone will always
be doomed to failure until you allow God to be at the center of your life — then, like me, you will want to receive this beautiful sacrament. Then, and only then, will
your preparation for Christmas be complete. Then you will really be ready for
the coming at Christmas of God’s Son: your savior, you redeemer; but also your
brother, your lover, and your best friend.
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