Homily for Sunday, 8 January 2023– The Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

Imagine that you could travel to anywhere in the world you wanted. Where would you go?

I lived in Paris, “the City of Light,” for over five years while completing a doctorate, so I would put Paris at the top of my list of recommended destinations. As a Basilian priest, I have been blessed to have served in or visited all five countries in which my order serves: In France, the place of our founding in 1822, Annonay, “Historic City of the Hot Air Balloon,” and Paris. In Canada, I have lived in Toronto, “Hogtown, Hollywood or Broadway North, Queen City, TO, The Six,” and in Windsor, “Automotive Capital of Canada.” I have visited Basilian communities in Mexico: Tehuacán, “Place of Gods” and Mexico City, “City of Palaces.” I have served in the United States, in Irondequoit, New York, “A Town for a Lifetime,” which is a suburb of Rochester, “The Flower City.” And I have served in Colombia: In Cali, “A Branch of Heaven,” Santa Marta, “America’s Pearl,” Medellín, “The Eternal Spring,” and Bogotá, “2 600 Metres Closer to the Heavens” because of its altitude above sea level.

For over two years now already, I am happily settled back in Edmonton, “City of Champions,” the city where I was born and grew up. Edmonton’s nickname is not derived from some of the greatest professional sports teams ever assembled, especially in the 1980s, but from its recovery after the “Black Friday” tornado of 1987. *It always brings me great joy to return here to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to this faith community, my home parish from when I was twelve years old until my early twenties. Now, Sherwood Park does not have a claim to fame or a showy nickname or motto. We could call it, “The Park,” or “The World’s Largest Hamlet: Guinness Book World Record Holder.” No, maybe it is better to be humble, without a nickname, a motto, or international fame.*

If there is one place in the world I have yet to visit where I would like to go, it might be Rome, The Eternal City, with Vatican City, the centre of the Catholic Church. I still have never been there. I have been to Bethlehem, where our Gospel today says a very important event took place. Bethlehem was the destination of a pilgrimage of magi or “wise men from the East,” who followed a star to a humble manger where the newborn Jesus, the Saviour of the world, lay.

Bethlehem, by its Hebrew name, is “the house of bread.” It was the birthplace of the biblical King David. But, whether in King David’s time, or Jesus’ time, or our time, Bethlehem has never been a very important city on the world stage. To this day Bethlehem is really a large town, a suburb overshadowed by nearby Jerusalem.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear today that even the wise men stopped in Jerusalem first, at Herod’s palace, on their way to Bethlehem. Herod and his line of kings had built the temple of Jerusalem, the centre of the Jewish faith at the time, into a structure larger and showier that it had ever been. Bethlehem was… just… little, by comparison to Jerusalem.

I doubt the wise men would have considered Bethlehem a top destination to visit. Could we imagine them showing up at the local camel rental agency one day?

— Yes, we will need as many camels as there are of us, with unlimited mileage; destination is Bethlehem, round trip, following a star.

— “So, three camels,” the camel rental agent asks, “Right”?

— Well, there are three gifts: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There may be more or fewer than three joining us on the trip. Can we add an extra driver on the largest camel, just in case?

— Sure, no problem. But you do realize how long a trip Bethlehem is from here by camel, right? And are all of you aged 25 or over? If not, those camels will require extra insurance.

— Yes, all of us are over 25. And we’ve worked out in our GPS the distance to Bethlehem. We considered flying, but, oh, the baggage fees for all the gold, frankincense, and myrrh we’re carrying… We’ll be fine, but one of our vehicles will need to be a sport utility camel, with extra luggage room. We have no budget limit; we’re astrologer-kings, so more than willing to spend good money on reliable camels.

— Okay, no problem at all. That will be ten shekels, taxes included. Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, I’ll just need your signatures at the bottom of the papyrus, and your initials where I’ve highlighted. And if Bob the fourth wise man decides to join you, an extra camel is free of charge. Have a great trip!

— That’s so generous of you! Thank you so much!

Bethlehem probably was not the top of the wise men’s list of destinations. But, for astrologers, people who followed the stars for a living, this pilgrimage would be once-in-a-lifetime. And, besides, a prophet had written years before that the wise men would encounter a certain Messiah had been born in little Bethlehem: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Why astrologers from the East who were almost certainly not Jewish Israelites would fulfill a prophecy of ancient Israel (Micah, in this case) is a mystery. But it was not the first time, nor would it be the last, when people would set out to travel off the beaten track.

Toward the end of the Book of Isaiah—the part of Isaiah from which we have just heard—the prophet is trying to convince an entire people to travel off the beaten track. This part of Isaiah is about the time when the people of Israel had been in exile in Babylon for around seventy years (many generations). Isaiah tries to convince them to return home, because a new power, Persia, has conquered Babylon and has decreed that the Israelites may return home. But Israel lay in ruins, its first temple (before Herod rebuilt it, centuries later) destroyed. Isaiah convinces a small fraction of the people in exile in Babylon to return and rebuild their homeland. But this small remnant of Israel is just enough to save Israel as a nation.

Yet Isaiah does more than to convince this faithful remnant to return home. Isaiah preaches that Israel will draw peoples of other nations to itself: “Nations shall come to your light, [bringing] gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

Matthew interprets this prophecy from Isaiah in light of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ. The “wise men from the East,” following a star to the cradle of the infant Messiah in little Bethlehem, represent for Matthew “the nations”—all the non-Jewish, non-Israelite peoples of the world, who were and still are most of the inhabitants of the world—who would “come to [God’s] light,” to God’s Messiah, God made flesh.

Only by setting out off the beaten track, toward a nation in need of rebuilding, would a remnant of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time not only be able to rebuild Israel’s ruins, but they would be able to welcome the rich gifts of the nations of the world. And, in turn, Israel’s God, our God, would be revealed in glory and truth to those other nations.

The same thing happens with the magi in Matthew’s Gospel: They are bold enough to set out, off the beaten track. They are momentarily sidetracked in Jerusalem by the evil Herod. They return home from Bethlehem “by another road” to avoid Herod. But only by being bold enough to travel beyond the conventional—not to a top destination, or even to a place of comfort—do the “wise men from the East,” who represent “the nations” (all of us, sisters and brothers), encounter our God in human flesh. Only so are they “overwhelmed with joy.” Only so is God in turn revealed or made known to all the nations on Earth.

Epiphany, the name of today’s celebration, is a Greek word that means making known. So, ideally, God is made known to those who set out off well-traveled paths, not to top destinations. Will this change our travel plans, sisters and brothers? Will this make us more like the wise men in Matthew’s Gospel or the remnant of Israel who returned home to rebuild their nation? To encounter God-made-flesh, might we need to travel to such hot destinations as deliberate kindness, as reconciliation especially with people we may find troublesome, whom we have hurt or who have hurt or sinned against us? Might we need to go to places like attentive listening, prayer, generosity with the goods of the Earth with which we have been blessed? Those are some of our Bethlehems today.

These may not be (at least at first) places of utmost comfort, but they are the places, the words, the actions by which we will encounter God. We will be “overwhelmed with joy.” And from there we will be able to make God known, in glory and truth, to all the nations and peoples of the Earth.

---

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, AB, and St. Joseph's College, Edmonton, AB, Canada. The OLPH version of its text, in Paragraph 3, is above, marked with asterisks (*). Here is the version of the text for St. Joseph's College:

It always brings me great joy to serve here at St. Joseph’s College, where what is true, right, and beautiful is faithfully taught, studied, and lived, according to this place’s motto, Quæcumque vera doce me: “Teach me whatsoever things are true.”

Homily for Sunday, 19 July 2015

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34

Are you here? This question is the only text in a nondescript black font on several billboards I saw this past week while driving from New York City back to Rochester. I suppose the effect of this billboard art project is to call into question the expression we see often, especially on maps: “You are here.”

Are you here? This question was so simple that it became for me, while driving, even a bit disturbing. Are you here? Of course I’m here! But are you really here? Yes, I am here, enjoying the scenery and the music on the radio; hoping I get home without any mechanical problems with my car; thinking about the ton of work I have waiting for me once I arrive at home… Wow, I’m hungry!... I need to get out and stretch so I do not become too tired by this long trip! Yes, I’m here, I think, but maybe I’m “here” just enough that I can drive well and attentively. Have any of us ever experienced being “here,” but just enough in the present to be able to achieve or complete a task?

From time to time have any of us felt like the “vast crowd” following Jesus in our Gospel reading today, or like Jesus’ first Apostles in the same Gospel? Jesus recognizes the multitude as “like sheep without a shepherd.” The people following him might have been able to say, “Yes,” to the question, “Are you here,” if only imperfectly. “Yes, we are here, along with our many worries of daily life. Yes, we are here, just present enough to function well, at least by appearance. Yes, but…” Jesus the Good Shepherd invites this disoriented and tired crowd to rest; to listen and to be fed by his Good News and later also physically. Mark’s Gospel says to us today that Jesus “began to teach” the crowd “many things.”

What does Jesus teach them? How does Jesus act as their shepherd? Here to teach is an act of shepherding. Would Jesus have taught them about living in peace? In his letter to the Ephesians; our second reading today  St. Paul says that Jesus “is our peace.” What better way to teach and to be taught about peace than to be in the presence of Jesus Christ? Jesus is no military leader. He is not a political or business elite (this is not to say that to have political power or wealth is wrong in itself). But Jesus is the humble shepherd. In him peace is not a feeling or something we promote when we feel like it, or when it suits our political interests; our ideology. In this way Jesus “is our peace” in person and so teaches us peace.

Did Jesus teach the crowd about justice? The prophet Jeremiah in our first reading describes the “righteous” and Good Shepherd, chosen by God from the line of King David, as first and foremost a just shepherd. The name God, through Jeremiah, gives to this shepherd; to the Messiah, is “the LORD our justice.” And so justice is the most important characteristic of the shepherd to be chosen by God to care for God’s people.

And what kind of justice does God, speaking though Jeremiah, want of his shepherds? A “shepherding” justice is justice by which we care especially for those most in need: Immigrants and refugees; those who are poor; the unemployed; the sick; those who long for forgiveness and mercy; those who experience divided households and families. The greatest injustice committed by the false “shepherds” Jeremiah reprimands is this: Not to care for those most in need of God’s flock. The greatest injustice is not to care for these most vulnerable out of compassion for them; until we are able to identify with them both in their joy and suffering; until, as our Pope Francis has said many times, we have on ourselves “the smell of the sheep.” This is justice. This is the only way to respond rightly to the question that now is much more than a clever saying on a highway billboard; that is a fundamental question of justice: “Are you here”? Are we here with the most in need; those who cry out most to God and to us for relief from their suffering; for an end to all forms of violence; for our kind presence, an image of the presence of Christ the Good Shepherd, working through us?

It would not have been a surprise, then, had Jesus taught the crowd following him about justice. Jesus “began to teach them many things.” Is it not probable that Jesus taught them about the kind of justice God wants of us? Justice, like peace, is the identifying mark of the Good Shepherd; of all of us to the extent we are shepherds; leaders. We are at the same time “sheep” of God’s flock and shepherds called to care for and to love one another. God calls us to be the authentic image of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, in our homes; in our places of work and study; in our country; in our world.

But all this talk about the importance of being examples of justice and peace; about being the authentic image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, could give us the dangerous idea that to be a leader; a shepherd is based on constant activity. Or worse, it could give us the idea that we can work effectively for peace, for justice, or for whatever other value of the Kingdom of God almost without a regular commitment to prayer (sometimes silent prayer; alone; us-with-God). But without God, to be the kind of shepherd; the kind of leader God calls us to be is impossible.

Does this not seem self-evident to us? But this is precisely the dangerous thinking that Jesus tries to correct in his own Apostles. In our Gospel reading today the Apostles return from a successful mission. With great enthusiasm they report to Jesus “all they had done and taught.” And Jesus invites them, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” These words of Jesus reveal to us another identifying mark of the Good Shepherd: To know and to anticipate the needs of those for whose well-being we are responsible.

In this same Gospel today, Jesus recognizes the need of the crowd following him; a people “like sheep without a shepherd.” And even though his Apostles, amid all the success of their activity; their mission; their teaching do not recognize their own need for rest; for retreat; for prayer; to be alone with God, Jesus recognizes their needs for them: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”

Like Jesus’ Apostles, we as Christians will need at times to be more active in building the Kingdom of God in our world. We will be more active in our leadership of this Church of Jesus Christ; more active in promoting justice and peace. But at other times we will need to “rest a while”; to pray; to enter into intimate conversation (many times without words) with our God.

Jesus invites us, always with his help, to find this balance. I believe this is true not only for priests like me, or for women and men religious, or laypeople in active ministry. I believe this is true for all of us. On the one hand, activism almost without prayer will make us at best into good social workers (not that anything is wrong with social work of itself as a profession). At worst, this lifestyle will endanger our faith; our relationship with God. On the other hand, solitude without community; without activity; without an element of social justice is equally dangerous to our faith.

But if we find a balance we can be leaders and, yes, shepherds in the image of Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, in our Church and in our world. We can answer the question, “Are you here”? not with “yes, but”… but with a confident “yes”!

Yes, we act for peace; for social justice, supreme values of the Reign of God! At the same time, yes, we are so alive in our prayer, the way in which we recognize intimately the voice of Jesus, our Good Shepherd; in which we can rejoice in times of solitude in deserted places with our God! Firmly and with a meaning more profound than on any highway billboard, we can answer: “Yes, we are here”!

Homily for Friday, 6 February 2015– St. Kateri School Mass, Memorial of St. Paul Miki and Companions

Friday of the 4th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 John 2:29b-3:1a; Psalm 119:129-130, 133, 135; Mark 9:33-37. (Readings for Masses with Children).

This homily included props: A signed painting I received as a gift from Basilian novices on my most recent visit to Colombia, a satchel-type bag with aboriginal design from an earlier visit to Colombia, and clip art pictures of a beach and sun, a mosquito, and the devil.

Greetings, children of God, students, teachers, staff, and parents of St. Kateri School! It has been just under a month since I went away to help the Basilians, the order of priests I belong to, in Colombia. Does anybody here know, more or less, where Colombia is? How about a little show and tell?

You see, I have this little bag, made by the descendants of the first people who lived in Colombia. My bag is filled with memories and things I like about Colombia: This painting of two Aboriginal people (the first people to live in Colombia), carrying a bag just like the one I have. These bags are designed by these “first people” of Colombia. This is a neat design, and a beautiful painting, isn’t it?

…This is a gift from the members of our order there, whom I love so much. I have the beach and the sun… Well, I carried up these pictures of the beach and the sun. The real beach and sun were too big to fit into my suitcase.

But, as much as I love Colombia (this was my fourth time there to serve with my order), I love being back here to celebrate Mass with all of us, children of God. How do we know, though, that we are children of God? Our first reading today, from the first letter of John, says so. We hear this from 1 John: “You know that everyone who does right is a child of God.”

Now, do we not all at least try to “do right”? I think so. Teachers and parents, would you not agree with me? And so 1 John says it: We are children of God. It gives me great joy as a priest to be able to go all over the world to celebrate Jesus, God made human, present during our Eucharist, our Mass; to celebrate with children of God from Colombia to right here at St. Kateri School and Parish!

And yet there are a just a few things I don’t like about Colombia, like mosquitoes. Who likes mosquitoes? ...Wait, how did a mosquito get into my bag? Good thing this is just a picture of a mosquito! And there is something even worse than mosquitoes; something I really dislike, whether it’s in Colombia or here. What is it? Well, I really dislike sin. All of us as children of God are called to dislike sin and try, with God’s help, not to sin. What is sin? It’s something that we know is wrong but we do it anyway. Now at least we all try our best as children of God not to sin, right? But there’s a problem… Yeah, him; Satan, the devil! [I pull a picture of the devil out of my bag.]

…Wait: How did you get in here, Satan? How did you get through airport security? How did you get into my soul [cringe]? I didn’t declare a devil when I went through customs. Get out of here, Satan! Jesus is here with these children, their parents, and their teachers and school staff, and we’re celebrating Mass!

Besides better airport security, how can we avoid letting the devil squeak into our lives and make trouble? How can we avoid sin and “do right” instead? Our readings give us a couple of ways. First, we can pray. We pray to God in our Psalm, “Keep your promise and don’t let me stumble, or let sin control my life… Lord, let your face shine upon me.” Isn’t this a beautiful prayer? Do you think we could all make this our prayer, every day? I know I’m going to try to pray something this every day, and then the devil won’t try to sneak into my luggage again!

An even better way to avoid sin and the devil is found in our Gospel reading today. The Gospel of Mark says that, while the disciples were “arguing about which one of them was the greatest,” Jesus welcomed “a child to stand near him.” Shouldn’t we all try to welcome one another as Jesus welcomes this child: To help each other with homework; to play nicely on the playground and at home; not to bully; to respect our teachers and parents? This is how we, like Jesus, welcome one another as children of God. And so I say again: Greetings, St. Kateri students; parents; teachers; staff! Welcome, people of prayer; people who, with God’s help, “do right.” Welcome and blessings, children of God!

Homily for Sunday, 4 January 2015– Epiphany of the Lord

Readings of the day: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-11, 12-13; Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This homily was given at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada.

Who are these “wise men from the East” of whom we hear in our Gospel reading today from Matthew, on this feast of the Epiphany of our Lord? What is the significance of the gifts they bring: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh? Who are some other important people in this event? Today’s celebration and our readings for it present us with many strange details, words, images, and people.

First, our celebration today is called “the Epiphany of the Lord.” Strange words for five hundred (for our Daily Double): What is “Epiphany”? This word means a “showing forth.” We celebrate today the showing forth of our Lord to the world, only not as we would expect. God, our Lord, is shown forth as a tiny, weak human baby to the “wise men,” strange men from a strange land to the East, in a stinky stable, in a small town, in a troubled land under Roman occupation. This was the greatest “Epiphany of [our] Lord,” although it was not the first and certainly will not be the last.

And, again, just who were these “wise men” anyway? Tradition says that there were three because they brought three gifts. Do we not picture them dressed in fine and colourful clothing, as kings? But no one really knows who these “wise men” were, how many there were, or how they dressed, or whether they were kings or astronomers, looking to the movement of the stars for signs, or what exactly they did for a living. We do know from Matthew’s Gospel that the wise men have some idea of whom they are searching for when they enter Jerusalem. They ask, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews”?

We also know by the gifts the wise men bring that they know something of the significance of this child born in Bethlehem. The wise men bring gold, the gift for a king. They bring frankincense, the gift for somebody divine; for a god (in the same way that, when we use incense today, it reminds us of our prayers rising up to God in heaven). The wise men bring myrrh, a bitter burial spice. Myrrh hints that the story of this child, Jesus, will include bitter tragedy, indeed death on a cross... But death will not be the end of this story, for Jesus or for us.

But along with gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, the wise men bring another gift to the manger scene in Bethlehem of the Epiphany of our Lord. What is this gift? Might some of us be thinking, “Father, you aren’t going to tell us that there were actually four gifts brought by the wise men to Jesus, are you? Look: The Gospel clearly says that there were only three gifts”!

Fair enough, but then our Gospel reading says this: When the wise men “saw [where] the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” This, too, is a strange detail from Matthew’s Gospel: The wise men arrive at Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem: a stinky stable in a small town in a land under Roman occupation, and are still “overwhelmed,” not with sadness or a sense of fear (although they had visited Herod and may have known his evil intentions, and they did bring myrrh as a gift); not “overwhelmed” with fatigue for having traveled a great distance, but “overwhelmed with joy.”

This joy is the hidden gift of the wise men to our Lord Jesus at his Epiphany. Would this joy not also be a great gift for us to give to God and to one another: Joy that is itself God’s gift to us, a significant way in which God is shown forth to us?

Now, I understand if this is almost too much to ask of us to bring and to give another gift to one another or to God. Many of us have traveled long distances to be with our families and loved ones at this time of year. Those of us who have traveled have had to be mindful of weight limits on luggage, especially if we have traveled by air. With gold, frankincense, and myrrh, the wise men would have been charged unreasonable excess baggage fees. And the frankincense may well have been considered dangerous goods; would they even have gotten it on an airplane? So it is good that the wise men traveled by camel!

But I assure all of us, if we do not know this deep down already: Joy; the joy the wise men brought to the Lord Jesus in Bethlehem; the joy we are all invited to bring to our Lord today and always actually takes weight off, so there is no chance of excess baggage fees. And joy is completely duty-free for those of us who wish to carry it even across international borders; to any place in the world!

Joy is the gift that the prophet Isaiah once invited the people of Israel to give to one another and back to God. “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” we hear in our first reading, from Isaiah. “Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice.”

How would the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time; a people who had been in exile in Babylon for about seventy years at this point, have heard this message? I imagine this as their response: “Rejoice?! Isaiah, are you joking? Here we are; we have spent two generations in exile. Jerusalem and its Temple are in ruins, so there is no point in going back there, and you want us to be joyful?”

And yet Isaiah holds fast to his invitation: “Arise, shine, for your light has come… See and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice.” It is an invitation that holds true for us today: Our “light has come. The glory of the Lord has risen upon” us. Christ has been born for us; has shown himself to the wise men, the face of God in the face of a newborn child, for us. Christ lived, served, and loved as one of us. Christ died for us; rose again for us; will return at the end of time for us. May our hearts, like those of the wise men; like those of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time; like those of Christian disciples and saints through the ages, “thrill and rejoice.” Our “light has come”; our Lord’s Epiphany is here and now. Our Lord shows himself through God’s own gift of joy, our gift of joy to our world.

Many of us, I admit, may find it difficult, even (perhaps especially) during this Christmas season, to show forth this gift of joy to the world. Our world gives us many reasons to be anything but joyful: Wars, terrorism, and other forms of violence. Just days ago, an unprecedented nine people were killed in one day in this city in an extreme and horrific act of domestic violence. We experience broken families, broken friendships; estrangement within families; estrangement from the Church. Many of us feel every bit the strangers that the people of Israel in Isaiah’s time or the wise men in Jesus’ time must have felt when they lay their gifts before our Lord Jesus in Bethlehem.

And yet the wise men are an example to all of us: “When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy.” In a stinky stable in a small town in a land under Roman occupation, the wise men lay their gifts: Gold to our newborn king; Frankincense to God; Myrrh to our Savior who would raise us to new life through his cross and resurrection; Joy to the world!

Homily for Sunday, 7 December 2014

2nd Sunday in Advent

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

Who here has ever prepared for a long journey? What would we bring with us on this journey? We need our passports if we are leaving the country. We need enough clothing and footwear for the duration of the journey. We need the right kind of clothing. We need chargers for all our electronic devices; maybe a good book; personal toiletries; money…

Now who here has ever been on a journey when it is difficult to know what to expect or what to bring? I have been on some journeys for which I have found it difficult to prepare. As a junior in university, I studied for one year on exchange in Lille, in northern France. I worried for some time about whether I would be accepted for the exchange; whether I had the right paperwork to apply for my French student visa; whether I had enough money to last the year abroad. As a Basilian, when I went to Cali, Colombia to teach for the first time six years ago, I was even less sure about what to expect. I had little prior teaching experience and had not been to South America before. At least when I went to France, I could speak, read, and write in French already; I knew very little Spanish when I first arrived in Colombia.

Even worse than not knowing what to expect of a long journey, who here has ever prepared to go somewhere when we really did not want to go; when going frightened us? Fortunately, I have not had this kind of experience. But this was the experience of the people of Isaiah’s time; the experience of which we hear in our first reading today. This was also the experience of many people in the time of John the Baptist and Jesus in our Gospel reading.

Imagine the background events to our first reading: The prophet Isaiah wakes up one morning and is enjoying his cup of coffee when God says to him: “Say this to my people, Israel: “Give comfort to my people.” You have “received from the hand of the LORD double for all your sins.”

“Comfort and forgiveness of sins,” Isaiah thinks, “the people will be happy with this message. A man named George Frideric Handel will set these words to beautiful music in a few hundred years. This music will be called ‘The Messiah.’”

But then God continues: “The people are to go home to Israel. ‘Prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!’ Prepare a way back from this exile in Babylon. Go back to Jerusalem that the Babylonians destroyed years ago. Rebuild it and make it into my house; a house of God once again”!

“Whoa,” Isaiah says, “Are you sure, God? The people will be afraid to go back to Jerusalem. I need to think over another cup of coffee, or maybe some of that mint tea that is so good here in the Middle East: How will I prepare the people to return home; to rebuild Jerusalem”?

“I know,” Isaiah suddenly jumps up, “I’ll remind the people of how much God cares for us: “Like a shepherd he feeds his flock… and [leads] the ewes with care.”

Isaiah’s message was for the most part a success. A small group of the people in exile in Babylon did decide to return home to Jerusalem; to rebuild the city and its temple as the house of God. These people prepared for and then set out on a journey back to a place where they did not know what to expect.

But this would not be the last time, in the Bible or in our time, when people would prepare to set out on a journey to somewhere or something they did not know what to expect. Our Gospel reading from Mark says that, just as “Jesus Christ, the Son of God” was becoming known, “people of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem” were going out to meet a man named John, who was baptizing in the Jordan River.

Imagine this: Probably most of the people going to meet John the Baptist did not know how to prepare to meet him; did not know what to expect from this man baptizing in the Jordan. John had a reputation for being a bit wild. He spoke loudly about repentance; about preparing the way for a Savior to come after him. He dressed in “camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist.” (This was the hipster fashion of the New Testament.) John’s personal hygiene was suspect. And long before low-carb, low-fat, high-protein, or crash diets were popular, John was feasting on “locusts and wild honey.” I have heard the John the Baptist diet is delicious and nutritious, but I think I will pass.

And yet despite his reputation as a wild man, there is something that draws us; attracts us to John the Baptist and his message. What is it? We are attracted to John even if his invitation to prepare and to set out toward the unexpected may frighten us.

Could it be that John’s message sounds a lot like that of the prophet Isaiah? “Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’” Could it be John’s humility with which he recognizes, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”? Could it be that we know, as the people of John’s time knew, who this “one mightier than” John; the one to “baptize…with the Holy Spirit” is: Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior?

Like Isaiah, John the Baptist asks us to set out on a journey without knowing what to expect from this journey, or quite how to prepare for it. We know that our salvation through Jesus Christ is at the end of this journey. We know that this journey will change us if we set out on it. If we set out “to prepare the way of the Lord,” we will become more like the humble John the Baptist, pointing out Jesus’ presence in our lives; in the world; in the goodness and kindness of people around us. We will be moved to repent from our sin. We will be more like the prophet Isaiah, speaking truth to powerful and meek alike, urging one another to return home; to return to God with all our hearts. We will become more like the Lord Jesus himself, even as we are saved by him.

How ready are we to be changed by our Advent journey? How ready are we to prepare for what we are to become, more and more like Jesus himself; like our Lord and Savior? John the Baptist, like Isaiah, calls us to set out on a journey. The message of John and of Isaiah is attractive and yet unnerving at the same time: Prepare. For what (or for whom) are we to prepare? What are we to expect of this journey?

This journey is not like anything we could expect. We cannot prepare for it simply by packing our passports; enough clothing that is right for the weather, our electronic devices and their chargers; foreign language books for beginners… No, this journey, if we set out on it, will lead us through the unexpected; the frightening; the attractive moments. If we set out to “prepare the way of the Lord,” to prepare for what we will become through our journey, we will become more like Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and we will be saved by our journey with, through, and in Christ.