Changing our Expectations

Homily for Friday of the Third Week in Advent

Human beings are tough creatures when it comes to breaking a habit or conforming themselves to a new way of thinking. For the Jewish people, who had precise ideas and set expectations of who their Messiah would be, the presence of John the Baptist, and then Jesus, was a radical paradigm shift. This shift was simply not one everyone could make. John had been a burning and shining lamp that they were content to follow and in whom they could rejoice for a while. However, when Christ came with even greater testimony and more prominent works, their enthusiasm waned. This was not the Messiah for whom they had waited. Ironically, the very gift they were given to share, as outlined for them by the prophet Isaiah, is the one they themselves cannot accept. When Jesus began welcoming foreigners, they began to think of him as so foreign from what they expected.

God welcoming outsiders to join his people and receive his gift of salvation calls for a posture of gratefulness. Even the disciples of Jesus, good Jews all, found it difficult to expand the horizons of their concept of who was a neighbor – something we learn in the Acts of the Apostles. Both Peter and Paul made advances toward Gentiles. It caused no little difficulty in the early Christian community.

The invitation to the divine life, manifested in the Lord who came to the earth to teach and save us all and bring us all into the inner circle of God’s Kingdom, is a tremendous gift. However, it is a gift that demands that we accept the least among us in the spirit of love in order to testify to the fact that Jesus is the Lord of all people. Sadly, Christian people even in our own times find it difficult to look beyond the boundaries of race, gender, ethnic origin, and a multitude of other differences among God’s people.

In a little more than a week, we will celebrate the great Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Part of that story includes a visitation of people from the East, Gentile wise man. While we would never think of excluding the representations of these somewhat mythic visitors in our Nativity crèches, in our day-to-day life we think nothing of excluding those who are different than we are. All are welcome at the table of the Lord.