Third Sunday of Advent
Life can be rough sometimes. We try to do our best, but sometimes our best is not enough, is not appreciated, or simply doesn’t work out at all. I think we all have those days. Misery loves company, and so today we can commiserate (at least a little) with St. John the Baptist. There he was, just preaching God’s word, preparing the way for the Messiah, baptizing people in the Jordan, and then, because he was preaching against the immoral marriage of King Herod and Herodias, gets locked up in jail: no trial, no chance to plead his cause, just locked up indefinitely. He doesn’t know it, but at some point in the future, he will become the victim of a hastily-made promise in response to a dance by King Herod’s step-daughter, Salome. Life was not dealing St. John the Baptist good cards.
We can understand his questioning. Nothing seems to be happening the way he thought it should. So he sends messengers to Jesus, just to make sure that his second cousin is really the Messiah. The floor has seemed to come out from under St. John the Baptist, and he’s grasping for some solid footing.
But Jesus rarely answers questions with a simple yes or no. There is always more to His answers than an everyday affirmation or negation. So Jesus says, “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.” Jesus’ ministry is confirmed not simply by word, but by what Jesus does. Jesus’ own actions testify that Jesus is the Messiah, and even more than that, is God Himself. But then Jesus has that curious line: “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” In other words, blessed is the one who can accept God’s plan for salvation, even when it’s different from our plans.
The kingdom of heaven is still at hand. It is still present in embryonic form on earth, and is still coming in its fulness with Jesus’ return. Somedays, especially on one of those days, we may think, ‘God, can’t you just make things work the way they’re supposed to? Isn’t it time for all of this brokenness and messed-up reality to come to an end?’ But St. James reminds us that it will happen in God’s way and in God’s time. He reminds us in the second reading to be patient, and be stout-hearted. Just as the prophets in the Old Testament kept waiting and waiting for the Messiah to come; just as they preached God’s word without often seeing the fruits of their own preaching, so we are called to wait and let God establish His kingdom in His way, which is often not our way. If it were up to us, the kingdom of God would likely have come in shock and awe years or even decades ago. But then, if God were doing it our way, the kingdom of God may have come in its fulness centuries ago, and we would not even exist.
Today we rejoice, because we are more than halfway to Christmas. We rejoice because our waiting for the celebration of the Nativity of our Lord is close to an end. We rejoice because our salvation is nearer now than it was years or decades ago. But we are not there yet.
Still, God is faithful to His promise, and He is preparing, in His time and His way, a new kingdom where there is life even in the desert; where glory and splendor will be the norm; where feeble hands, weak knees, and frightened hearts will be strengthened. Isaiah prophesied that the kingdom of God would include the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame leaping, and the mute singing. Jesus was affirming to St. John the Baptist in His response that the kingdom of God had already begun, and that even though it was not present for St. John in its fulness, it was present in its fulness in Jesus.
If we have Jesus, it doesn’t mean that our life will be easy and carefree. The gospel of prosperity and a happy-go-lucky life is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we have take hold of the kingdom of God in the midst of brokenness and error, and that the darkness, though it surrounds us, cannot conquer the light of Christ. And that should cause us to rejoice. Because even on one of those days; even on the days when everything seems to go wrong, we have Jesus, especially in the Eucharist, and spending time with Him and receiving Him gives us the strength to persevere in our hope and our faith until Jesus returns again, and ushers in the fulness of the kingdom of God at the end of time, when God will be all in all, when God will put a definitive end to sin and suffering, and when perfect happiness will be the reality for all those who persevered with Christ on this earth in the new heaven and new earth.
