This Sunday’s readings challenge the hearer to give up easy theological answers and false security in an effort to attain a more expansive sense of the dominion of heaven.
It was of him that prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of 1 crying out within the desert, Prepare the best way of the Lord, make straight his paths. (Mt 3:3)
Liturgical day
Second Sunday of Advent
Readings
Is 11:1-10, Ps 72, Rom 15:4-9, Mt 3:1-12
Prayer
In what area of your considering do it’s worthwhile to apply the balm of John the Baptist?
Have you ever ever preferred to rest upon falsehoods for a way of security?
How are you going to make the peaceful kingdom a reality today?
Take, for instance, the paradox of John the Baptist’s charge against the Pharisees and Sadducees within the Gospel reading from Matthew. The prophet’s words sting like strong medicine, a balm for obtuse considering. John the Baptist, who’s Jesus’ precursor within the ministry of repentance, with typical prophetic charisma says to those religious professionals, “Who warned you to flee from the approaching wrath” (Mt 3:7)? These learned and pious men desire the baptism of repentance offered by John, however the Baptist challenges their understanding of it.
John the Baptist subverts the false security many felt as descendants of Abraham, descendants from inside an “in” group. They drew their sense of righteousness from their birthright and loyalty to the covenant God first established with Abraham. John the Baptist rejects this sense of entitlement, “Don’t say to yourselves, ‘We now have Abraham as our father.’ For I let you know, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones” (Mt 3:9). The “balm” of the Baptist began a healing process when it invited them to a mirrored image deeper than their pharisaical considering and a conversion deeper than birth in a selected group. It may do the identical for believers today.
Advent is a time to use the balm of John the Baptist, and to repent of any sense of entitlement or narrowness of vision.
John the Baptist cautions his listeners to think beyond the constraints of their false security. He directs this challenge especially on the religious professionals of Jesus’ time, who, he believed, lived by many falsehoods. Settling into entitlements and falsehood could be a problem for believers in any era. How easy it’s even today to deaden one’s faith with statements like, “That is just how the world works,” or “My Sunday obligation is enough,” or “I can rely solely on being saved within the name of Christ,” or “The poor will at all times exist and I haven’t any responsibility for his or her fate.”
On this Sunday’s first reading, the prophet Isaiah issues a poetic version of the identical challenge: Stop settling for false security and open your mind to the extravagance of God’s mercy. Throughout the Book of Isaiah, the prophet has much to say concerning the lack of justice for the poor. In the primary reading, Isaiah offers a lyrical reimagination of the peaceful kingdom, a reality that has been longed for but never yet achieved. “A just order,” writes Joseph Blenkinsopp, “during which the poor and powerless can enjoy equal rights with the rich and powerful” (Isaiah 1-39 [Anchor Yale Bible 19, 2008] 263). Only then, says the prophet Isaiah, will the wolf be a guest of the lamb, with just a little child to guide them (Is 11:6).
The peaceful kingdom has not yet arrived, and the empty safety of falsehoods carry too many through the fun and struggles of on a regular basis life. For these reasons Advent is a time to use the balm of John the Baptist, and to repent of any sense of entitlement or narrowness of vision. The dominion of heaven is close at hand at any time when it’s reimagined through the lens of the approaching Prince of Peace (Mt 3:2).
