Not From A Distance Series

4th Sunday of Advent 2014

Extraordinary Form

About a quarter century ago Bette Midler recorded a song by Julie Gold called “from a distance.” The idea behind the lengthy lyrics is that if you get far enough away from planet earth, it all looks green and blue and serene. You can’t see at that distance the interpersonal conflicts and internecine battles that closer up are visible and become headline news. And it goes on to say that “God is watching us from a distance.” The lyrics are hopeful and schmaltzy and, from God’s true perspective– total malarkey.

Today’s Gospel tells the truth. God is watching, alright, but that is not all God is doing. St. Luke pinpoints almost the day and the hour the promise began its fulfillment out in the open. It was in the year 29 AD, which was the fifteenth year of Emperor Tiberius, stepson of Caesar Augustus. At the death of the tyrant King Herod, shortly after the birth of Jesus, his kingdom had been split up by the Romans into four territories, or tetrarchs. The Romans had made Judea into a province soon afterwards, and the tyrant Pontius Pilate was its procurator. Herod Antipas, another bloody tyrant not quite as bad as his father, ruled Galilee. Luke also mentions two other politicians for the rest of the Levant. But those were only historical signposts. The critical information has to do with God’s rule, God’s plan, and God’s leaders. “The word of God came to Jochanon bar Zechariah in the wilderness,” the place where Moses had encountered the Lord in a burning bush, and where he had later received Torah from the hand of God. It was the place where Elijah would hear the Word of God in a still, small voice, and even later, where Jesus Himself would spend forty days preparing for the greatest three years, and the most momentous Holy Week in the history of the world.

We know him as John the Baptist, because he brought a baptism, a soaking, in repentance and forgiveness of sins. We also know that he did not only hear the Word of God. He spoke the Word he heard, and did so without mincing words. In the next sentence he tells his listeners: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Repent and bear good fruit, the fruit of repentance. Your DNA will not save you, nor will the fact that you are the fortieth in a line of Catholic ancestors. Repent, believe, and bear fruit.

What does that mean, on a practical level, for us close to two thousand years later. The key is the phrase “forgiveness of sins.” At John’s circumcision–which is now our baptism–his father Zechariah Cohen had prophesied that he would give knowledge of salvation through forgiveness of sins. So, hopefully, we have all made a good and thorough confession of our mortal sins, and even some venial ones that plague us, before today, in preparation for Christmas. But there’s another aspect to that phrase, “forgiveness of sins,” that we tend to forget at our peril.

Let me venture to guess that, if you have more than fifteen or twenty Christmases in your sleigh bag, there’s at least one of them that hides an unhappy memory. I don’t mean the one when you were eight and Santa didn’t bring you that high-priced toy. I mean the one when you had made a special gift for your favorite uncle and he showed up intoxicated and thoughtlessly threw it out with the wrapping paper. I mean the one when one of your parents bawled you out for something you didn’t do, or for no reason at all. I mean the one when your spouse was emotionally withdrawn, or yelled at the kids, or was on extended tour and left you feeling alone and abandoned. It’s not the lack of stuff that hurts us at Christmas. No, it’s any lack of love. Now, twenty or thirty years or more later, you smell a particular Christmas spice, or hear a special carol, and the hurt returns, and the wound in your heart reopens.

Today’s Introit chants “let the heavens open and germinate the Savior.” There is grace to heal that wound, but there is, first of all, grace that you need to do something that makes the healing possible. Let’s recall the first Posada. I mean the one without music and tamales and bunuelos. The very pregnant young woman and her husband had been turned away from every inn because they were overbooked for the Roman census. She felt contractions and knew her time had come. What did Mary and Joseph have to do before finding the hole in the ground sheep sanctuary we now commemorate as the birthplace of Christ? What grace did they need? It was the grace of forgiveness. They had to forgive everyone who had put them in that impossible condition, from the Emperor on his throne to the last innkeeper and surly doorman. Because they could not act to reveal the Messiah to the world, the source of all forgiveness and healing grace, until they had given forgiveness themselves.