Third Sunday of Advent (A), Conservations with Consequences Podcast, December 10, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Third Sunday of Advent, A, Vigil
December 10, 2022

To listen to an audio recording of the brief homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s an honor to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us this Sunday, when we will enter into one of the most intriguing and sometimes bewildering dialogues in the Gospels. St. John the Baptist sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come or should we look for another?” Some commentators interpret this to mean that St. John the Baptist, who was imprisoned by Herod for saying his marriage to his sister-in-law and niece Herodias was adulterous, incestuous and unlawful, couldn’t understand why Jesus wasn’t doing what everyone expected the long-awaited Messiah to do when he came, which was to reinstitute the kingdom of Israel, kick out foreign powers like the Romans and their vassals like Herod Antipas, Herod Archelaus, and Herod Philip, free captives like John and overturn centuries of suffering and injustices. They say that John, who at the Jordan had indicated Jesus as the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world, whose sandal straps he said he was unworthy to loosen, who he said had to increase while John decreased, was growing impatient at Jesus’ seeming inaction and had sent his followers to Jesus to state by their question, essentially, that if he were the Messiah, the one who is to come, he should start acting like it. Other commentators, like, notably, the great doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales, the 400^th anniversary of whose death and birth into eternal life the Church will mark on December 28 this month, said that John well knew and believed Jesus was indeed the one who was to come, but sent his disciples because they, out of frustration that John was in prison, were the ones who were questioning whether Jesus was truly the Messiah and why he wasn’t behaving according to their politicized Messianic expectations. He said that John sent his disciples to Jesus to reveal Jesus to them and to everyone once more as the Messiah, to help them, like he had previously helped St. Andrew, St. John and others at the Jordan, to cling to Jesus and to detach themselves from his precursor. One is free to interpret the scene as if John were himself having doubts, but I’m with St. Francis de Sales in thinking that it was indeed the Baptists’ followers who were the ones with doubts and complaints as they grouped around John while John knew that they should be with the Messiah who had come. So he sent them with their question to Jesus so that Jesus would be able to show them that he was indeed the long-awaited one and help them recalibrate their false expectations.
• In response to their question whether he was the Messiah or whether they should wait for another, Jesus immediately focused on deeds. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them,” all actions that Isaiah prophesied about the Messianic job description that Jesus himself, when he was in his hometown synagogue and read the scroll from Isaiah, had said were being fulfilled in their hearing. When Jesus instructed them to describe what they were hearing and seeing, it seems clear that Jesus was working miracles in their midst and that they were witnessing them live and conversing with formerly blind, deaf, lame, leprous, dead people made whole and were hearing Jesus’ words to the human person’s fundamental poverty, which is a life without him. Jesus was doing, therefore, what Sacred Scripture had said the one who was to come was supposed to do, and that they should ponder and make their evaluation based on those deeds, rather than upon their worldly hopes for a political savior.
• Jesus finished by saying something very poignant, “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” It was clear that up until that point, they were focusing far more on what Jesus was not doing rather than all that he was, and were offended. Jesus was not behaving as the Messiah they wanted. Many others as we know would similarly take offense at Jesus. The scribes and Pharisees would take offense at him because he healed people on the Sabbath, because he conversed and ate with sinners, because he didn’t engage in their complicated man-made rituals of washing hands, pots, and jugs, because he didn’t fast the way they did, and so many other reasons. The people of Nazareth took offense at him in the Synagogue, murmuring how could the supposed son of a carpenter be claiming to be the Messiah. Nathaniel took offense at him, wondering whether any good could come from Nazareth. Some of Jesus’ cousins took offense at him because they thought he was out of his mind behaving in a way that got people to begin plotting his death. The Rich Young Man took offense at him when Jesus challenged him to go sell what he had, give the money to the poor, and then come follow him. Many of his disciples took offense at him when he proclaimed himself to be the True Manna, the living Bread come down from heaven, and that they would have to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood to have life in him. Such a teaching, they said, was too hard to endure. And most people on Calvary took offense at him, where he was mocked as an imposter by the chief priests, soldiers, passersby, and even the criminals on his side, all saying the same thing, if you are the Messiah prove it by saving yourself and coming down from the Cross. This list goes on. They had all taken offense at him.
• That brings us to our own reaction to Jesus this Advent. Do we look to Jesus as the long-awaited one, as the Messiah, as the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world, or not? Do we accept Jesus on his own terms, on what he says and what he does, or do we judge him according to other criteria, of what we would want the Messiah to do? Many today take offense at Jesus, at his teachings they don’t like, at the choices he makes with which they don’t agree. They take offense because Jesus didn’t eliminate all injustice in the world and in fact had to endure it like a weakling, which was the scandal to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus and to so many others. They take offense that Jesus founded the Church on what they deem obviously unqualified people, like Peter and the apostles. They take offense that Jesus called only men to be priests. They take offense over Jesus’ sexual teachings calling us to purity of heart and to the real meaning of marriage. They take offense over the way Jesus established the Sacrament of Penance to forgive our sins. They take offense over Jesus’ identification with the poor, hungry, thirsty, and naked, with immigrants, sick and the imprisoned, and how he takes personally whatever we do or fail to do to them. They take offense over Jesus’ summons to deny ourselves, pick up our cross each day and follow him on the way of the Cross. They take offense at Jesus’ summons to love our enemies, pray for our persecutors, do good to those who hate us, to turn the other cheek, forgive seventy times seven times, and so much more. As arm chair quarterbacks and backseat drivers, they take offense at what Jesus has said and done and failed to say or do.
• The Church has us focus on this scene in Advent so that we can examine our expectations, our longings, and go from doubt and offense to faith and discipleship. Jesus is indeed the Messiah who is to come, and not only should we not look for another, but we should take seriously the one who came. We shouldn’t cling to our own ideas. We shouldn’t cling to our own gurus, like the disciples of John were clinging to him. We should go to Jesus and rather than take offense take full part in his messianic mission. And just like John the Baptist did with the doubts of his disciples, we should send and bring others to Jesus with their questions and help them to discover what we ourselves have joyfully discovered, that Jesus is indeed the fulfillment of Messianic hopes. We should help them recalibrate their longings to the actual Messiah rather than to recalibrate and judge the Messiah and Son of God according to their own whims and wishes.
• At the end of this Sunday’s Gospel, after John’s disciples had left and presumably were going to John to share all that they had seen and heard, Jesus praised John publicly so that everyone would be able to heed John the Baptist’s words and work in the desert. He said he wasn’t a reed swayed by the wind, or someone dressed in fine clothing, but a prophet and more than a prophet, the greatest born of woman and the messenger foretold who would prepare the way for the Messiah. This wasn’t flattery, but a means by which to help people take John the Baptist seriously and his call to make straight the paths for the Messiah to come. Part of preparing the way for the Messiah is to remove the obstacles of worldly expectations for what we would want the Messiah to do, but instead to take him on his own terms. Jesus wants all of us to do the work of conversion John the Baptist sought to carry out at the Jordan. And he wants us to become like John the Baptist in not vacillating like wind-blown reeds, in not dressing according to worldly vanities, but in becoming true prophets actualizing the Word of God, and precursors helping others to prepare the way for Jesus to come into their life. Because of his role in salvation history, John was the greatest born of woman, Jesus said, but then he added, “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” By our baptism whereby we have become a child of God, by our life in the kingdom nourished by the Sacraments, by the Gospels and New Testament, by the communion of the Church, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost and beyond, we are indeed blessed far more than John was, and to whom more is given, more is to be expected. Let’s not take offense at this high calling we have as Jesus’ disciples, but take advantage of all the means God gives us, including this Sunday’s Mass, to live as children of the kingdom and help others come to the King.

The Gospel on which the homily was based was: 

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