Second Sunday of Advent

Fr Dominic’s Homily

So we’ve had storm Darragh. Which seemed to go on for exactly 12 hours 3am to 3pm. Very ominous.

Somebody said that it was God’s response to the assisted suicide bill. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Now what on earth is going on in the Gospel reading today? A list of weird names that at first glance are totally meaningless to us. Just sound very complicated. Tongue twisters. Trachonitis even sounds like a throat condition.

So what’s it all about?

Well there is one thing that all these people have in common. They are all terrible leaders in their time.

Tiberius was Caesar at that time and for most of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He was notorious for being probably the worst Caesar (even worse than Nero) in terms of his lifestyle which is beyond belief.

We all know who Pontius Pilate was. He was put into a difficult situation when he had to judge Jesus. But even he was well known to be untrustworthy in his governing.

Herod was a ruler of Galilee along with his brother Philip. Lysanias was a ruler of Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas were notorious high priests at that time who helped to condemn Jesus and have him crucified. They were both well known for their corruption.

The point is that Luke is giving us some historical background.  These were all real people that existed more or less in the same time frame doing all sorts of damage and extortion in their governing. And this is the background into which we hear that a certain John the Baptist makes his presence known.

In other words the account of the arrival of Christ is no myth or story. It’s factual. And it is directly into this mess of leadership that John the Baptist preaches a message of repentance and the arrival of the messiah.

Into this mess of corruption and extortion under the name of governance will come the one true leader who is the king of the universe.

You might ask with such an important message why on earth does John go out into the wilderness to preach this? Wouldn’t it make sense for him to go straight to Jerusalem? That where all the people are and that’s where he could be far more successful surely?

Why? Because God’s simply not interested in success and he never will be. All God is interested in is fruitfulness and faithfulness to him.

Remember in the exodus many years before, Moses led all those people through the desert away from Pharaoh towards the Promised Land? Well John is emulating this in a second Exodus. Only here in this desert he is leading people away from sin through the red sea in a baptism of repentance in order to reach the spiritual promised land of heaven.

Originally there were twelve tribes of Israel. These became divided and scattered for various regions. Many were exiled. Where are they now? You might be surprised to find out by using ChatGPT. But the point is that part of God’s plan is to gather them back together again as a parent gathers in children.

God wants to bring these twelve tribes back to a New Jerusalem. And John was announcing that the time for this was now.

So John the Baptist prepares the way for the ultimate leader by telling people to repent of their sins. Why does he say this? Because sin separates us from God.

The people struggled with this. They thought it wasn’t necessary to have sin removed. (Sounds like today!)

But sin separates us from God. Like those twelve tribes it exiles us and drives us from the Promised Land back into the desert. In a spiritual way.

So John is preaching a New Exodus. The messiah will choose twelve new tribe leaders in his disciples who will lead the people to a New Temple who is Jesus in the New Jerusalem of Heaven.

So this season of Advent is a time for us to prepare our hearts. To remember the physical exodus and so perform a spiritual exodus on our hearts.

How do we do this? By listening to Baruch – the scribe of Isaiah when he says make straight the paths of the Lord into our hearts. Fill any depletion remove any excess that is causing obstruction of Gods grace into our souls.

In this way we can make that supernatural journey from the desert into the heavenly Promised Land with God.