Sunday December 5th : Second Sunday of Advent Gospel Reflection by Brian Maher OMI
Luke 3:1-6
This week in the Gospel the fiery, vaguely eccentric figure of John the Baptist makes his first appearance, and he will return next week as well. He is the messenger, the announcer, the one who says, “Open your eyes, look, the one we have waited for is here, among us. Right now, at this very moment, he stands as one of us, visible to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.”
There is little doubt in the Gospels that John and Jesus knew one another quite well. Indeed, it is likely that John had a role in helping Jesus launch his own mission. Their personalities are dramatically different, yet the initial message of Jesus, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is close at hand.” is almost identical to the message of John, “Repent and be baptized for the Kingdom of God is near.”
We also have, what I always think of as a beautiful yet sad moment in Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus hears of the death of John and he does what we all would want to do when someone close to us dies; he tries to get away by himself to be alone, to grieve and remember his friend. Yet even in his grief he gets no rest. The crowd discover where he is, follow him and demand that he heals and teaches them. Matthew tells us that even while he mourns the loss of John, his compassion reaches out to those who found him. It is one of those intimate glimpses we get into the very human and stressful life he must have lived.
Let me call attention to just one, almost insignificant, sentence in the Gospel, a sentence we might so easily skip over and lose. As the ministry of John begins, Luke tells us that “the word of God came to John, son of Zachariah, in the wilderness….” It is not an unusual statement in the Old and New Testaments. Again and again, we hear of the word of God ‘coming to…’ different people, or God ‘talking to’ people or ‘sending messengers’ to them or even ‘conversing with’ them. Even Jesus himself, on at least two occasions in his life ‘heard’ God ‘speak’ to him.
Did you ever wonder what this ‘word’ that ‘came to’ him in the wilderness actually was, or how did it ‘come to’ him, or how was he so certain that what ‘came to’ him was from God? If any one of us stood up and said that ‘the word of God came to me last night’ our hearers would probably suggest that we see a doctor or they would smile benevolently and say, “How sad, drinking again!”
Yet, whatever form this ‘word of God’ took back then, those who heard it were convinced enough to not only change their lives but to die rather than deny the truth of whatever ‘they heard.’
I sometimes wonder if maybe God has stopped ‘talking’ to us, or his ‘word’ stopped ‘coming to us’ after the last full stop of the last book of the New Testament was written. But, I ask myself, why would God abandon us like that? Why, when there is so much confusion and doubt and pain in our World would God leave us alone and abandon us to our own devices?
No! The God I have come to know could never forget us like that. The problem then must be with us… somehow, we have stopped hearing the word of God coming to us. True, we live in a world where words are more plentiful than ever and where they ‘come to’ us faster and, seemingly, clearer than ever before. We can ‘Google’ whatever we want to know or we can ask Siri, Alexa, Cortana and any of the many other internet gurus.
Why, then, don’t we hear the word of God as the people of the Bible did? In the Acts of the Apostles Paul is able to say, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us….” Imagine saying that today? We would be thought delusional!
Could it be that we are drowning in words today? They assault us from all angles, on every subject, all of them claiming to be true and backed up by physical, psychological or sociological evidence. What doesn’t suit us we call ‘Fake News’ and so perpetrate ‘our’ word as the ultimate truth. Poor God doesn’t stand a chance of being heard in this maelstrom of words!
Advent is a time of opportunity. A time, maybe, to move away from all the many voices and words surrounding us. A time to enter into that “Silent Night” when our very God becomes one of us and is born, as we were, a tiny, helpless infant. There are no words to explain or even capture this incredible moment. It is beyond us – and beyond Siri, Wikipedia and even Google!
The word of God ‘came to’ John in the wilderness, in the silence and wide-open spaces of the desert. There, John freed himself from the distractions of life and in that silence the word of God ‘came to’ him and, more importantly, he was able to hear it.
Perhaps the invitation of today’s Gospel, and of this Advent, is to tune out for a few minutes each day from the TV jingles, advertisements, music and shopping, allowing ourselves to simply be silent before God, asking that, like John, the word God will ‘come to’ us and, this Christmas morning, we will recognise the child in the manger as truly ‘God with us.’
Let me finish with a prayer worth saying each day this week:
“Uncrowd my heart, O God, until silence speaks in your still, small voice; turn me from the hearing of words, and the making of words, and the confusion of much speaking, to listening, waiting, stillness, silence.” — Esther de Waal, ‘Lost in Wonder’.
Many thanks.
Brian.
Brian is the director of Oblate Partners in Mission and is based at Denis Hurley House, Quex Road, Kilburn. If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email Brian at b.maher@oblates.ie
Thank you for reading and reflecting with us!
| Gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent, December 5th | Luke 3:1-6 © |
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