Homily 12-31-17

As preached by Brother Christopher
December 31, 2017

Holy Wisdom Church 

As a culture, the aftermath of Christmas brings an abrupt end to the holiday steamroller that blitzed us day and night from Thanksgiving. I was in Rite-Aid the day after Christmas and the decorations were already down and Christmas theme items were on sale, crammed into a single aisle off to the side of the store. Soon we’ll be moving on to the next economic opportunity: Valentine’s Day. I don’t know about you, but for me, this feels odd. I mean, Christmas is over before we’ve actually begun to celebrate... at least, given the scope of the mystery.

In Orthodoxy, we don’t really have Advent properly speaking. While there’s a forty-day period of fasting, the pre-Christmas period itself lasts only several days. Instead, as we heard Brother Luke allude to on the feast, we celebrate the Incarnation from Christmas through Theophany all the way to the Encounter. I believe the reason for this is that it takes this long to really absorb the mystery, to try to interiorize its reality: God enters the human condition, God “empties” Godself of divinity, knows from inside all the feelings human beings experience. The mystery of the incarnation can’t be digested in one sitting. Rather, it requires a quiet contemplative pondering over time, and that happens over the seasons of Christmas, Theophany, and the Encounter.

But this Sunday, the Sunday before Theophany, focuses on John the Baptist. Yes, he is the forerunner, the “Elijah” who is to come before the Messiah and his appearing is significant. He proclaims that the one who will come after him is far greater than he, that he’s not fit to carry his sandals. He excoriates the Sadducees and Pharisees who have come out into the wilderness to observe what he’s preaching, perhaps even to get baptized themselves. He calls them a brood of vipers – a brood of vipers! – and assures them that there will be no ethnic or social favoritism in the kingdom of heaven. “The ax is laid to the root,” roars John, “and it’s going to burn every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit.” He is the fierce ascetic, who speaks truth to power and damn the consequences. John imagines a Messiah to come after him that is even more biting and austere than he, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. “His winnowing fork is in his hand,” John challenges. The Messiah is going to burn the chaff in unquenchable fire.

But it’s clear that Jesus is not the type of Messiah that John expects. Later, in ch. 13 after John has been arrested and he hears reports about Jesus that challenge his expectations, he sends word to Jesus, “Are you really the one we are waiting for or must we look for another?” Implicit in the question is his own hesitation: because you’re not fitting into the Messiah mold. And look at what Jesus says in response: Tell John, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear and the dead are raised, and happy is the one who is not scandalized by me.” Far from being the hard-nosed ascetic, preaching fire and brimstone that John anticipates, Jesus is something entirely different. Messiah: Yes, but a Messiah Through his messianic works, Jesus points to a God of love, who elicits dedication and devotion by love and not by force, by forgiveness that liberates and frees. Jesus is a healer, and his healings are both real and sacramental – pointing to what God is really like. We are being prepared by the Church to receive a Messiah that breaks the mold of all that is expected; who is not a political liberator, who is not a conqueror, who repudiates any sort of bogus triumphalism in favor of a radical vision of the Reign of God: whose purpose is to include rather than exclude and in so doing sow the seeds of real transformation. Jesus says, “Of all those born on earth none is greater than John the Baptist, but even the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he...” John is the apex of the old era: austerity, judgment and a call to repentance that uses a healthy dose of fear as the catalyst for change. Jesus is about something different, something new, even revolutionary. In his person he ushers in a real metanoia, a new vision of what the Reign of God is that elicits dedication on the basis of love and not fear.  It remains for us to deepen our understanding and experience of this throughout this holy season.

Brother Christopher

  

An interesting note about Pharisees from Daniel Harrington: He explains that they were a Jewish group active in Palestine between 2cent B.C. to 1^st century AD. Their name likely has some connection with the Heb word “paras” which means ‘separate’. They are the separated ones and developed traditions concerning how to live out Torah in everyday life. These emphasized ritual purity, food tithes, Sabbath Observance. Given how they became such opponents of Jesus, it is highly significant that they resemble in attitude some of the legalists in Orthodox Christianity (as well as traditionalists and fundamentalists in Catholicism and Evangelicalism). Orthodox can sometimes place more importance on ‘ritual purity’ than on simply living out the Gospel in love.