Second Sunday of Advent
A sneaky thought occurred to
me as I was looking at the gospel earlier, that if I would have walked in here
tonight wearing clothing made of camel’s hair and a leather belt around my waist,
drinking wild honey and locust, I bet I could have cleared this church in real
quick order, right? You probably would
have said, “Whoa, we are out of here.”
And yet what is it about
this man, John the Baptist that people are coming from all over the region to
hear him. To hear somebody call them a
brood of vipers? That is not a very nice
term. We could translate it into modern
day language but I won’t use that because you know what he’s talking
about. He’s is talking about their
ancestry, you are descendants of snakes, brood of vipers. So John the Baptist is going after the good
people. The Pharisees and Sadduces,
those who come to church and come to the temple, pay their tithes and taxes and
do all the things that the law asks of them.
Viola, I’m looking at them tonight and you’re looking at me.
We are good people,
right? Did anybody commit mass murder
today? Did anybody go out and rob a bank
today? Did you drive somebody off the road
today? No, we don’t do those kinds of
things. We’re good people.
So what’s John the Baptist
doing coming saying to you and me tonight, repent, turn away from your sins,
and give some evidence that you mean to reform.
So if we’re not doing terrible things what would it be maybe that you
and I need to look in our lives to see what we need to change.
Now you can get a pretty
good idea, and it happens with me too.
Look at the things you find hard to accept in other people. Why do they drive so fast? Where did he get his drivers’ license? Why doesn’t she clean up her room you say to
a teenage daughter? Why don’t you call
if you’re going to be late, as your spouse comes home late from work? Why didn’t you tell me that you wouldn’t be
able to make it? How come this? Why not that?
Notice all the things that we seem to find difficult in other
people. You want to know where they come
from? It’s called a mirror. Go and stand in front of a mirror and you and
I will probably be very humbled to find out that the things we have the most
difficulty with in other people, their mistakes, their faults, their failings,
their shortcomings, are staring us right in the face.
We had a great vision in the
first reading tonight. Wouldn’t that be
great? No more war, no poverty, no
hunger, no super-rich, no super-poor. All
the animals get along together, even babies and snakes lying down
together. Everybody in the parish
supporting each other, great to be with each other no matter how old or young,
how long we’ve been here, the color of our skin. Everybody in the whole wide world, “Whoa,
we’re all human beings and we love one another.” Wouldn’t that be great? What an image!
So there’s the dream that
God is calling you and me to try to achieve.
How are we going to bring it into fruition? Where is the evidence of our change of
heart? Go stand in front of a mirror
tonight when you get back home, or cheat on the way home. Look in the rearview mirror or the side
mirror and look at yourself and say, “Okay, John the Baptist, what inside me do
I need to change?” Again nobody is a
mass murderer, nobody is doing terrible things, but the little spitefulness,
the arrogance, the gossip, the judgements, the lack of forgiveness, the lack of
patience and tolerance, the manipulation, the controlling, the anger, the
resentment. Those are the things that I
am sure that many of us in our lives could say, “I need to root that out a
little bit.” If you and I could change
just one little thing in ourselves that makes the world a little bit easier to
be in. Look around. Six to seven hundred of us here in this
church, what a difference that would be in our world community. We could put so much more peace and joy
everywhere we would go yet tonight and tomorrow, throughout this week. There would be no action that would be too
small or insignificant that you and I could not do that would make our world a
better place.
So see the good that you and
I could do and say, “Lord, one area, one little tiny part of my life this week
I will turn around, flip over and I will see the good that I want to do rather
than the negative.” We will put so much
light and hope and joy wherever we will go.
And our world, our parish, our schools, our workplace, wherever we
journey will be better because God asked you and me to be there. Give some evidence that we need to
reform. We’ll change the whole world one
little tiny piece and God will multiply
it.