Homily for Sunday, 10 December 2023– Second Sunday of Advent, Year B

Readings of the day: Isaiah 40:1-5,, 9-11; Psalm 85:9-10, 11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8

We find ourselves at the beginning, sisters and brothers: “The beginning,” Mark’s Gospel proclaims by its very first words, “of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Mark wastes no time in revealing to us who Jesus is, “the Son of God,” and that his coming to live as one of us, in our human flesh—his advent—is “good news.” Spoiler alert! Mark does not even give us a nice, long account of Jesus’ infancy and childhood, to help us ease into the story, this “good news” he proclaims. Mark begins with the powerful preaching of John the Baptist, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” By this point Jesus is already an adult. Jesus, the one John announces as “more powerful” than he is, has probably already attracted followers. He has caused some “good [and necessary] trouble” in the minds and consciences of many already, the minds and consciences of the comfortable and powerful of this world.

So much for starting at the beginning of the story! And today we are not even at the beginning of Advent. We are a full week into the shortest possible Advent this year—three weeks and a day between the first Sunday of Advent, a week ago, and Christmas Day. And I do not know about any of us, but as of now I have yet to do much at all to prepare for Christmas. Gift shopping? Not started. Visiting family and friends I may not have seen for a while? Okay, I have done some visiting. Taking time to be with, or at least to pray for, people in need—the sick, the poor, those who find this time of year to be a struggle for many reasons? Okay, but I could do better. Tidying my physical spaces—my room, my office—let alone doing a little Christmas decorating?! Yikes! I think, if Jesus were to step into my room now, let alone the spiritual room that is my heart, my conscience, he might sound a little like my mother did when I was a kid: “Did a tornado hit here, or what”?!

(By the way, I will offer this little advertisement for those of us who want to do some spiritual—heart, mind, conscience—tidying soon: St. Joseph’s College’s Advent penance service is this Friday at 7:00 pm).

So, in a way it is okay if we are a little behind on our Advent-Christmas preparations, if our spiritual let alone physical spaces look chaotic to say the least. Advent offers us a new beginning. God meets us where we are in our present; in fact God sends messengers ahead of himself and his Christ—John the Baptist, the saints, holy people we know and meet in our own lives—to draw us closer to him and to eternal life. That is the “good news”!

Yet Advent is a bit of a strange time of year. We are at a beginning of the Church’s liturgical year, of the story of our world’s first encounter with God in the human person of Jesus. But we are, at the same time, well into this story, after many encounters in history and in our own lives already with God’s “good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Last Sunday, the first Sunday, the very beginning of Advent, our readings at Mass gave the sense more of an end, or a story very much in progress, than a beginning. We began this time of Advent by hearing from near the end of the Gospel of Mark: Jesus, just before his passion and death, urging his disciples to “keep awake,” ready for the events of Jesus’ passion and death that would happen right after that point, but more importantly for an unknown “Last Day” when Jesus will return in glory. St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians also oriented us toward that final “day of our Lord Jesus Christ,” exhorting the Corinthian Christian faithful to remain “blameless” until that day by the Lord’s strength and grace. The Psalm reinforced our plea for divine strength. And, a week ago, we heard Isaiah making final plans for the return of the people of Israel from a long exile in Babylon. That exile, it seems, had made the people of Israel stubborn; only a small “remnant” would return to their land to rebuild the nation and its temple in Jerusalem that had been the centre of the Jewish faith. So Isaiah pleads for divine intervention to break through Israel’s sin and hardness of heart: “O [LORD] that you would tear open the heavens and come down”!

Today, this second Sunday of Advent, our readings start back at beginnings: Mark speaks of “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The second letter of Peter gives us a sense of being closer to a beginning than an end. The people for whom 2 Peter is written have become impatient. The first Christians of that community had suffered persecution. Many had already died. 2 Peter reminds them that, in God’s time, this is only the beginning: “The Lord is not slow about his promise… but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

Peter’s message is very similar to that of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel. For John the Baptist, there is urgency to repentance to prepare for the coming of Jesus, the “one after” John. Yet, 2 Peter says, there is also urgency to know God’s mercy and peace, God’s meeting us in the sometimes-chaotic events of this world and our lives, even as we strive to repent, to tidy our spiritual spaces, our minds and consciences.

Our God has never been one to wait until we have everything in order—our hearts, our minds, our consciences—before coming to be with us in our present time. The second letter of Peter offers us a very typical (for a biblical text) vision of the end of time. It will be chaos: “The heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire.” But 2 Peter invites us not to worry about this chaos. Instead, lead “lives of holiness and godliness,” practice conversion and repentance here and now; “strive to be found by [the Lord] at peace.”

Jesus promised to return at the end of time. I think we can be almost certain that the end of time, when Jesus will re-enter this world, will be chaotic. We do not know what the world will look like when Jesus returns on the Last Day. But we can remain at peace if we think back to the beginning, the first time Jesus entered our world. God took our human flesh in a world that was chaotic then. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary into a poor, chaotic, smelly stable with barn animals, at a time when the Romans ruled Jesus’ homeland by force.

God does not wait for us to have everything in order before entering into our present in a way that changes our existence profoundly and irreversibly. Well before Jesus’ time, the prophet Isaiah was calling to a people still in exile in Babylon, preparing to return to, well, chaos and ruin—a ruined temple—in Jerusalem. And Isaiah says, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.”

Isaiah’s cry to Jerusalem is something like, “Yes, what you see, what is left of your homeland is chaos, ruin. But God is not waiting. God brings comfort, peace, justice, salvation now.” As the Psalmist says, here and now, “justice and peace” are about to “kiss each other.” This is a new beginning for the people of Israel!

God does not wait for us to have everything in order. God enters and changes our existence when God wills it. That is what we celebrate this Advent season, sisters and brothers! God has already entered this world, amid its chaos—our not having everything quite in order—many times. Ultimately, God entered our world in the human person of Jesus Christ, into a poor, chaotic, smelly scene, a nation ruled by foreign force.

Finally, Jesus promises us that he will enter our world again on the Last Day. All we can do to be ready for the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory, is the same thing we can do be ready for this day, for the next day, the day after that, and so on: Remember how God has intervened in our world in the past. Remember that God did not wait until we had everything in order to bring peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. May we be at peace, knowing and reflecting on this. Our time of Advent takes us back to those beginnings even as we anticipate with hope the Last Day, Jesus’ return in glory.

Today, in the midst of Advent, we remember the beginning of God’s comfort to Israel, still in exile, through the prophet Isaiah. We remember the preaching of John the Baptist, a message of repentance and hope. We pray with the Psalmist for a time when “justice and peace will kiss each other.” We remember 2 Peter’s exhortation to remain at peace. These have been our new beginnings in history, God entering our story when we most need God, with peace, justice, order, comfort, mercy. This is the “good news” our Scriptures proclaim today, “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Homily for Sunday, 6 August 2023– Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord

Readings of the day: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 9; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Matthew 17:1-9

Over these last couple of weeks, one of the most popular and successful movies playing in theatres has been Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” I just saw this movie a few days ago. Its title character, the physicist and developer of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, understood the explosion of the Trinity test bomb, the “successful” goal of the Manhattan Project in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, as an apocalyptic moment.

In the popular sense of the term “apocalyptic,” Oppenheimer would live out his life after the Manhattan Project afraid and guilt-ridden that he had ushered in an era toward the destruction of the world. On this day in 1945, August 6, the first atomic bomb used in combat would be dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. And then, three days later, August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb would be dropped on Nagasaki. The Cold War was soon in full swing: Nations stockpiled nuclear weapons, arguing unbelievably that their armaments assured mutual deterrence from ever having to use them.

In 1965, Oppenheimer reflected in an NBC interview (“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”) on the Trinity test explosion: “Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multiarmed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”

In another sense of “apocalyptic,” closer to its literal sense of uncovering or unveiling, I think Oppenheimer quickly discovered that the development of nuclear weapons was revealing something about the human capacity for evil and destruction that he had wished would remain hidden. The effect of the Fall or “original sin” has brought us to this. Countries continue to stockpile nuclear arsenals. Mutual deterrence long ago ceased to be a viable, believable argument to build and stockpile such weapons. Short of nuclear warfare, conventional warfare and its weaponry have become more precise, more deliberate, more deadly. Just look at the destruction that continues to be wrought in Ukraine; smaller-scale events in a world war being fought “piecemeal,” as Pope Francis has said, like current events in Niger or Sudan! Sometimes it takes a (literally or figuratively) apocalyptic event like the Trinity test explosion or the use of nuclear weapons in warfare over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reveal the tremendous power of human technological progress: Its potential for good, yes, but also a disturbing potential for death and destruction.

Suffice it to say that one of my favourite styles of writing in the Bible—and one of the most recognizable—is apocalyptic. Apocalypses form entire books of the Bible, like the Book of Revelation but also Daniel from whom we hear today. Apocalyptic literature is woven into many other books of the Bible, like the Gospels. And, if we think about it, all the readings we hear today, on this Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, are in some way apocalyptic.

The Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ is an apocalyptic event. Matthew’s Gospel account of the Transfiguration immediately puts us in the presence of a complex event. A lot happens in this scene of the Lord’s Transfiguration, and all of it is apocalyptic in the sense of something or somebody being revealed, unveiled, uncovered.

Bible experts have rightly commented on how Jesus’ transfiguration reveals his divinity. A few have commented on how the Transfiguration reveals Jesus’ full humanity, his full identity and mission as a human being, the “Son of Man” (extending the imagery we hear from the Book of Daniel today) whose ultimate goal will be to die and rise from the dead for us. Still others say that the Transfiguration is the revelation of the whole Trinity at once, one God in three persons: The Father is present in the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased; Listen to him”! The Son is present in the physical human person of Jesus. And the Holy Spirit is present in the “bright cloud” that overshadows Jesus, Moses, Elijah, Peter, James, and John.

The presence of Moses and Elijah alongside Jesus as he is transfigured reveals Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah), a point especially central in Matthew’s Gospel. Yet the Transfiguration also reveals a lot about who Jesus’ disciples (Peter, James, and John) are, who we are. We hear that, initially, the disciples understand very rightly that first, they are witnesses to an apocalyptic event, a full revelation of God’s glory in Jesus Christ and, second, as Peter says for himself and his fellow disciples to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

A little detail here distinguishes Matthew’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration from those of Mark and Luke: Matthew, unlike Mark or Luke, does not say at this point in the Transfiguration event that Peter does not know what he is saying or that the three disciples are afraid. Matthew says that Jesus’ disciples are afraid only after God has spoken from the cloud. But, for now, Peter, James, and John know perfectly well what they are saying and what is happening. Peter proposes to “make [three] dwellings… one for [Jesus], one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

Matthew’s Greek word for “dwellings” here is skēnē, from which we get the English word “scene.” Maybe I am still too much in movie mode after having watched “Oppenheimer,” speaking of scenes, but I think Peter reminds us of a most essential approach to apocalyptic events like Jesus’ Transfiguration. Peter reminds us that, when God is revealing something of who God is and who we are (by definition, an apocalypse!), “it is good”—it is best—for us to remain on scene. For Peter, James, John, Jesus’ other apostles and disciples, the time will come when they will all flee from the scene of another apocalyptic event, the cross, to which Jesus’ Transfiguration points. Jesus’ disciples would all flee from God’s self-revelation through Jesus crucified of a God not aloof to the sin and suffering of the world, but who would willingly die for us to disempower that sin and suffering, transforming it into the greatest good possible for us.

Some time (days, weeks, years) after the Transfiguration and the cross of Jesus, Jesus’ disciples would return to the scene of these apocalyptic events. They would return to where God revealed God’s self in a specially complete and transforming way to us. Peter would be able to look back on Jesus’ Transfiguration through the lens of the cross and say, without a trace of the fear that had once overtaken him, James, and John on the Mount of the Transfiguration: “It was good that we were there. And it is still good that we are here now. We are on scene, here and now. We are as much witnesses to God’s “voice from heaven,” to God’s presence and “prophetic message” of our salvation now “more fully confirmed,” as those disciples who stood by Jesus as he was transfigured were. So, 2 Peter says to us: Good, now stay here, on scene, for a while. ‘Be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place.’”

In other words, God’s unveiling to us (an apocalypse!) of God’s presence and saving plan for us through the Transfiguration and the cross and resurrection of Jesus is ongoing. It is not a new unveiling, a new divine revelation, but it is continuous from those biblical events. It continues from Daniel’s visions of “one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven” who would conquer all the rulers and nations who had oppressed God’s chosen people, Israel, by the time Daniel was written. God’s ongoing unveiling to us of God’s promise of salvation continues from the visions of the Psalmist of the complete and final establishment of God’s reign over all creation, so that even great mountains would “melt like wax before the LORD.”

We have the gift of hindsight, sisters and brothers: We know that our Psalm’s vision foreshadows Daniel’s apocalypse of “one like a son of man,” which prefigures the Transfiguration of Jesus, which points to the cross of Jesus. And Jesus’ death on the cross gave way to his resurrection. We live in an ongoing apocalypse, God’s unveiling of a divine plan for our salvation that will be fully realized at the end of time.

Until then, we are free to be, as J. Robert Oppenheimer feared he had become by unleashing nuclear weaponry upon the world, destroyers “of worlds.” We are free to do violence to one another through everything from war to unkind, untrue words and actions toward one another. We are free to deny that sin and evil are still pervasive in our world. We are free to flee the scene of the ongoing apocalypse as we do, say, when we deny that climate change is an emergency and that we have a role and responsibility in contributing to or mitigating it.

Yet we are also free (and encouraged) to remain on scene, to build “dwellings” for God, the Law and the prophets. We are free to act with kindness toward one another. We are free to do what we can to consume less and protect the environment. We are free to be builders “of worlds,” co-creators of the reign of God for which we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” We are free, in all these ways, as God said from the cloud on the Mount of the Transfiguration, to “listen to him”: Listen to our Lord Jesus who reveals our salvation to us one apocalyptic moment at a time, who says, “Do not be afraid”; listen to our Lord Jesus who urges us to nurture and protect creation, who urges us not to do violence to one another. This is how we remain on scene, and how it remains good for us to be here.