4th Sunday of Advent B

It was with some anxiety that I turned to those readings last Sunday in preparation for this week’s homily. Every year during Advent I try to develop a theme over the four weeks without having any clear idea at the start what that theme will be. Its a case of one week at a time and see where the readings take us. Having spent the first three weeks this year, then, exploring the meaning of sin, my hope was that this last week would bring that reflection to a conclusion. And once again the Word of God came up trumps, although, having seen it do so so many times over the years, I wonder why I ever doubted it.

Take the first reading, which we have reflected on many times over the years. In it, we hear how David, having defeated all his enemies, has built himself a house of cedar. After years of political and military struggle he is now a man at the peak of his powers. But, in his moment of triumph, David, unknown to himself, has never been as vulnerable to the wiles of the Serpent as he is now. And so he has an idea. And it seems like a good one. Human beings, after all, as we have been hearing in recent weeks, are never attracted by evil, only by apparent good. And so David, the Lord of all he surveys, will build a temple for the Lord. It sounds terrific; a thoroughly good, holy religious thing to do, so much so that even the prophet Nathan is deceived.’Go and do all that is in your mind’ he says, ‘for the Lord is with you.’ But the Lord was not with David, just as he is not with many other apparently good, holy, religious things that we do, and it’s only when he retires to his room to pray that Nathan sees the tail of the snake and the truth dawns on him. And so straight away, without waiting until morning, Nathan goes to David’s room with a message from the Lord. And the message is this. Who does David think he is? Who is God and who is the creature here? It’s God who will build David a house and not the other way round. Puffed up by power, and seduced, like Adam and Eve in the Genesis myth, by the subtlety of the Serpent, David has lost sight of who he is in relation to God, and it’s only by turning to the Gospel and contrasting David with Mary that we can see the deep-rooted flaw in his position for what it is.

And its not that Mary herself does not struggle initially with what is happening to her in the story of the Annunciation. She is deeply disturbed by the Angel’s message. and rightly so. Unlike David and Nathan in the first reading, fooled by the seemingly holy and pious thought, she is not one of those who think every thought they have is from God even if it does seems to be from an angel. She is well aware that the Serpent is more than capable of dressing up as God and that this is, in fact, by far his favourite tactic. Long before Thomas Aquinas, the serpent has always attracted people, not to evil, but to apparent good, the very method he used with David in that reading. And so, by a series of questions, Mary tests the angel’s message to see if it really is from God. And its only when the angel tells her about Elizabeth – something objective against which she can test what the angel is saying – that she utters those amazing words. ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let what you have said be done to me.’ David’s mistake was that he thought he could do something for God - classic religion without faith. Mary, the woman of faith, having first checked the situation out for any sign of the tail of the snake, was open to what God wanted to do in her. And if we can grasp the profound difference between these two positions then we are on the road to understanding the true nature of sin, the task we set ourselves when Advent began. And at its root, of course, is the desire to be God. We see it in the Genesis story – ‘eat the fruit and you will be like gods’ - and we have talked about it many times over the years. One member of the Men’s group even accused me on Wednesday night of harping on about it. But it was on Thursday morning, while listening to the radio, that I came across a wonderful example of it that I invite you to think about now.

The programme in question was Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In our time,’ one I often listen to and have referred to before. The topic this week was the nature of ‘time’, something that has fascinated me since I was about sixteen, and it took us into all kinds of amazing areas of science and philosophy. We talked about other, as yet unknown, dimensions. We talked about whether time existed at all or whether it was something invented by us to help make sense of our experience. We talked about an expanding universe, whether it would ever end, and if so, how. And we heard a lot about Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, key figures in this whole area. And it was utterly fascinating as well as mind-blowing, filled with all kinds of interesting speculation on as yet unanswered questions. But at the very end, the chairman, Melvyn Bragg, asked the panel if they thought another Einstein would come along and open up whole new levels of understanding. Only one person had time to answer, and what he said was this. ‘He will have to, to show us all how silly we have been.’

And there we have it. The arrogance of creatures who think we know far more than we do, spouting forth, at the drop of a hat, on things about which we know nothing. Looking back we wonder how people whom we think of as primitive could have thought the things they did, not realising that, in the future, people will look back on us and think the same, amazed at the primitive nature of our knowledge too. Created by God and sustained in existence by God, we have the sheer affrontery to think that we can decide whether God even exists or not.

This, in the end, is the root of sin: not badness but mind-blowing stupidity. Instead of declaring that God does not exist, the modern world would be better employed falling down on its knees this Christmas and, faced with the Christ-child, uttering those words of Thomas, ‘My Lord and my God.’

BIDDING PRAYERS

Given the subtle temptations of the Serpent in the world today, many things are done in God’s name which have nothing whatsoever to do with God. Fired by enthusiasm, and in some cases, fanaticism, many mistake their own thoughts for those of God, resulting often in things like terrorism and war. And so we pray for the wisdom and discernment we need to see through false gods who always think as we do, agree with everything we say and never challenge or question us.......................Lord hear us

In our own lives, too, we can easily confuse what is of God with what we have always thought or were taught as children. And so, even when God, through his Spirit living and working in history, calls us to change or embrace something new, we are unable or unwilling to do so. But not everything we have thought all our lives is true. Not everything we were taught as children is valid in today’s world or today’s Church and we pray for the grace to see this..........Lord hear us

The movement of God in our lives, as Mary discovered at the Annunciation, is quite often disturbing. It can be confusing and frightening and, like Mary, we can be left wondering how it can be. We say we are not good enough; we say we are too old, too young, too busy, too shy or any one of a thousand other reasons why we can’t do what God asks. But with God all things are possible and we pray for the grace to believe this about ourselves.................Lord hear us

Like Mary, we, too, are called to give birth to Jesus in the world of our own day. But first he must be conceived in us by the power of the Spirit, then grow in us until, when the time comes, we can offer him to the world. This means being fed and nourished by the Word and the Eucharist. It means becoming more and more like Jesus in the way we live so that, when people look at us, it is not us they see, but Jesus who lives and moves in us. And so we pray for this grace...........Lord hear us

Millions today have decided that God does not exist. And yet the vast majority of reasons given for this are infantile, based on ignorance and a complete misunderstanding of who God is. Over and over again we hear reasons why God cannot exist which were already tired and redundant hundreds of years ago. And so we pray that the world of our time will come to see this and learn to know the God who not only exists, but holds each one of us in existence too...........Lord hear us

The key to wisdom today is humility in the face of truth. Compared with the fullness of truth, even the most learned and clever on our planet today know next to nothing. Every week scientists discover new things which mean that what we thought was true isn’t true at all. And how often do we ourselves hold forth on subjects about which we know next to nothing. And so we pray for a deep sense of humility in the face of truth which is always far greater than we are..................Lord hear us