Advent Sunday III – Year A
Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10 James 5:7-10 Matthew 11:2-11
Gaudete! (Latin, 2nd person plural, imperative for the verb, “Rejoice!”) This is the opening exhortation in the long-used Entrance Antiphon for the 3rd Advent Sunday, which gives it the title, Gaudete Sunday. The title implies a more light-hearted and joyful interlude about half way through the nearly month-long, increasingly dark season of Advent. Advent, occurring in the northern hemisphere during autumn days of decreasing length and ever-lengthening nights, assumed a penitential and somber tone in past ages, somewhat akin to Lent. Since the renewal of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-65), a noticeably more hopeful theme has been recovered and restored. And, while much of the secular world has succeeded in anticipating Christmas and in converting Advent into a frenzied exercise in shopping and material gift giving, at least their target day title, Christmas, affords the Gospel a subtle chance of seeping into secular life. By God’s grace, even atheists and non-Christians conscientiously and sincerely bestow Christmas gifts upon their loved ones!
Isaiah has a monopoly on the first readings of each Advent Sunday this year. Today’s text is a song of salvation, salvation from the corruption, burdensomeness, slavery and harshness of ancient life. Indeed, modern life can be just as bad for many, but for either era, Isaiah proclaims that simple appreciation of God’s presence as itself a saving insight. This text is from the 35th chapter of his scroll, so in might well be from near the end of the his career, even decades after the fall of the northern Kingdom of Israel. He is the prophetic cheer leader for the kings, princes, priests and people of the surviving southern Kingdom of Judah and for Jerusalem. This lyrical text uses apocalyptic vocabulary with only a minimal tone of “vindication” and “divine recompense” in order to save the recently enslaved (by the Assyrians) from rather dreadful life-situations. Otherwise, the song is of divine blessings. God’s presence, and believers’ appreciation of God’s presence, makes us whole and healthy! The final lines comprise a promise of salvation even for those taken captive from the fallen Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians. God will “ransom” them and they “will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy!” This was a this-world promise in the minds of the ancients. We Christians have applied a more spiritual and next-world interpretation to these same words. And, we modern believers have expanded the community of those captives to include the entire human race. Likewise, we’ve expanded the “ransomed” to include everyone because of the largess of the Gospel and the Almighty Lovingness of God as savior of everyone!
So, indeed, in the liturgical eye, today anticipates a future, fuller appreciation of God’s universal salvation.
The Gospel text relates Jesus’ high praise for John the Baptist in whom many had perceived the advent of a new and long hoped-for presence by Israel’s God. Jesus amplifies John’s importance because John seems to know very well and to accept very humbly his own subordinate position, his heraldic task. To John’s question, Jesus describes some of the wonders produced by a genuine embrace of the Gospel. This is an echo of today’s Isaian text, terms descriptive of God’s saving presence. Jesus finally uses a cleverly engaging conundrum by which to compliment John the Baptist to the audience: “there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” This is an excellent example of a semitic riddle-complement designed to engage the hearers, to provoke them into critical thought and toward a new insight. It is poised to do the same to us today!
The middle reading from the letter of James acknowledges an early Church expectation of an immanent and final return of the Risen Jesus sometime during those first few apostolic generations. On the other hand, the letter’s counsel to “be patient” hints that at least the author of this letter was re-thinking and revising that expectation in more realistic terms. One’s own certitude does not make the expectation any truer or more definite, nor does it increase it’s urgency. It seems that James was beginning to relinquish the accepted idea of God’s schedule, with an increasing appreciation that we ought to make a more conscientious effort to appreciate our time here in this life. It is amusing that even today (in 2010) one can still find signs on some Christian churches announcing “Jesus Coming Soon!” While I might consider that assertion to be a gross misunderstanding of Gospel reality, it does insinuate a joy-filled expectation which is a healthy, if subtle, and important theme in Gospel hope! The “soon” tone in Advent points to the approach of the Feast of the Lord’s Nativity, the Incarnation Mystery. Note, Christmas is not a feast of the “birth day” of Jesus, but rather the “nativity,” the Word made flesh, the Incarnation. Birthday cake and candles (one large one for each millenium plus 10 small ones?) reduces the solemn festival to childishness and obscures the Mystery of the Incarnation. Our hope is not in a party, but rather in the appreciation of the reality of Christ’s presence. We make the Word present by how we hear and live the Gospel message. Our Church, as a society of believers, makes the Word present by how we collectively announce, hear, and live the message. We must work hard to prevent the Church (as an institution) from being confused with or equated to the Gospel message. Rather, we must incarnate the Gospel in our lives, and allow the Gospel to critique how we live.
Rejoice that you have heard the Word, been touched regularly by God’s grace, and indeed, can live in joyful expectation that blessings and hope abound!