Second Sunday in Advent – Year C
December 8, 2024 – 10:30 AM
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Sadrac Camacho
Isaiah 53:10-11 | Psalm 33:4-5;18-20;22
Hebrews 4:14-16 | Mark 10:35-45
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Sometimes the landscaping and lush green grass and trees trick us into forgetting that we really do live in the middle of a desert, the Colorado Desert, part of the Sonoran Desert to be exact. My jaw just about hit the floor the first time I left the tarmac at Palm Springs Airport. As the plane inclined to a pretty decent height, I saw basically a small square plot of human civilization, artificial, green, human civilization, followed by acres upon acres upon acres of arid desert. I then thought to myself why it is that we were so adverse to these desert conditions that we had so insulated ourselves with our city planning to make this Valley look like anything but a desert in a lot of ways. It’s because the Desert has this property of unrestrained wilderness to it. Looking ahead at a dry desert, it’s only you and the elements, only you and scarcity. It’s life stripped down to its most essential elements. Civilization is really kind of the antithesis of the Wild Desert. It’s what humanity creates with its surplus. But the desert, the wilderness, leaves only you, sparse vegetation, the critters that crawl and hide, and God. If you ever camp out in the Desert you realize just how eerily quiet it gets. If you sit still, you can even begin to hear your own bodily processes. The thumping of your heart. Of liquids moving subtly inside your face. It can get freaky. We’re not used to being so radically alone. The wilderness is a reminder that we are only but mortal bodies of flesh and blood. That if not for our intelligent use of this scarcity before us, it is only us and the harsh elements. And the Wilderness invariably makes you confront yourself. You are stuck there with yourself and God, and God will find you. Give it time. Let the hours pass. There is no TikTok, no YouTube, no Netflix. When it is truly just you and God completely alone, God will poke your consciousness to life. You will think deeply about how you’ve led your life. The wilderness makes it so we cannot run away from those reflections. So that you cannot run away from God.
So is it any surprise to us, that we see the prophet, Saint John the Baptist formed and molded precisely by these wild, desert conditions. St. John found God through his asceticism; through his rejection of all the diversions that kept him from hearing God in the hubbub of civilization. And in that messianic age in which he lived, in which the People of God so anxiously anticipated the arrival of a Messiah to bring order to their world, St. John the Baptist heard God loud and clear. Indeed, he shouts from the desert, there does come a Messiah, and we must make every path straight, the world’s topography will be changed so that every winding road and obstacle is removed, so that all flesh may see the salvation of God. Some might see this as saying repent repent repent. Basically, Jesus is coming and that involves judgement and punishment in some sense, so repent, straighten yourselves out. I’m not as eager to frontload that sentiment, though. Jesus is presented with a sort of inevitability. Yes we have to straighten these paths to make way for him, that is our obligation, but the force of destiny is what will reshape the world. Indeed, St. John says that all these changes to the winding roads and valleys shall happen, as if autonomously, with only the raw power of God’s Will. St. John is telling us to change because the Lord is coming but more than that he tells us an inevitability. The Lord is coming to radically change the World, to radically touch our hearts, change is coming as an inevitability of history. Jesus is so inevitable that we only need to straighten our roads, we need only open ourselves to him, to receive his Grace, to be affected by the World’s Change. St. John, isn’t simply saying repent, he’s saying open yourself up to me and change will find you, and love will find you.
And indeed, why should we make God’s encounter with humanity feel guilty, like we need to bow our heads down for our misdeeds. That’s not what we see being said by the prophet Baruch in our first reading. There the Babylonian exiles are being returned to Jerusalem by God. And there is no solemn regret or guilt. We see through the prophet Baruch the reconciliation of God and his people, and Baruch even tells the people to go to the mountains and celebrate their return. It’s a celebration whenever the Lord and his people reconcile—when everything else, everything else that keeps God and Us apart, is torn down. We see the same kind of attitude with St. Paul in Philippians. He was at that point quite literally imprisoned for his ministry. He was speaking about anticipation for the “day of Christ Jesus,” analogous to the “Day of the Lord,” a day in Jewish writings, which signified a divinely appointed time when God would conclude history, bringing judgment or salvation based on Israel’s faithfulness to the covenant. And rather than speak ominously and foment guilt, regret, dread and drive change in people’s hearts that way, he said that “he was confident that the one who began a good work in them would continue to complete it” that their love would increase ever more and more” so that they may be pure and blameless at the day of Christ. Here again, I see St. Paul set up the inevitability of history. The Day of Christ comes but not as an inauguration of despair and regret. It comes as an ultimate vindication of Christ’s ministry of love and compassion. The Day where the Lord meets his people will not be a sad day. Instead, with history comes an inevitability, Jesus is coming, the Day of Christ is coming, his change comes with the force of destiny. And if you open your heart to it, Jesus will make you pure and blameless on the eve of history. So in this Advent season, let us open our hearts and accept that we will be reformed by Love and Grace, if only we allow it to happen. Amen.