Homily: Second Sunday of Advent
Second Sunday of Advent (Lk 3:1-6)
The writer of Luke’s Gospel seemed to be very concerned with putting his story in historical context. He couldn’t just give us a date that John the Baptist appeared on the scene. Calendars hadn’t been invented so the way to describe when someone lived was to point to who oversaw the government at the time the individual was alive. John the Baptist lived at a time then when Tiberius Caesar ruled the Roman empire. He lived at a time when Israel was divided into parts with four different temporal rulers.
Yes, time was an important consideration for John the Baptist and Jesus. Both preached about eschatology, which means they talked about the end of the world. We have probably heard many sermons in our lives that contrast how John the Baptist and Jesus differed in their preaching. Both were motivational speakers who wanted to move people’s hearts.
John the Baptist used a fire and brimstone approach. He speaks of how everyone needs to reform their lives. If people don’t confess their sin, asking for forgiveness, they will pay a price. John isn’t a preacher who talked about a warm and fuzzy God. His God holds people to high standards. The road to salvation is narrow, also it is challenging.
Jesus took a different approach. He sought out sinners. Jesus extended mercy to people who had committed the most egregious offences against the law of God.
We have this competition between John the Baptist and Jesus while at the same time we have them expressing fondness for each other. John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the 29th verse. On the other hand, Jesus says, “No man born of a woman is greater than John the Baptist” in Matthew 11:11.
We might also propose that what made the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus different was their perception of time. John had a precise idea of time. On a certain day at a certain hour the end of the world will come. Time, which is measured in minutes, hours, days, months, years will run out. When that happens, everyone better be ready. John’s perception of time was chronological. Time ends. Theologians would say that this is the type of time we call Chronos.
Jesus saw time as a matter of unique opportunities. Time will always continue. Certain moments do come that will never come again. If we act, it will change our destiny forever. We can look back at our life seeing those times when we made decisions that changed us. We might look at a decision to marry as one of those moments. Also, we may look at the day we decided to become a parent as such a time. We might have been faced with a choice to move all the way across the country to begin a new career as a life altering moment in our lives. When time is seen a string of chances that we take or don’t take that is considered Kairos time.
John the Baptist was caught up in time as Chronos. He would have been at home with the picture we have of the old year passing during the holidays. We will see 2024 pictured as an old man bent over with a scythe in his hand ready to pass away. John believed that the end of the world would arrive, either today, tomorrow, or next week. We repent or we perish.
Jesus believed that the end of the world had already arrived. We are constantly living in a transitional moment. Our choice to live in the Kingdom of God or to ignore it is made right now. We are immersed in a new world order. Are we going to be apathetic about the Kingdom that has arrived? Or are we going to explore the unique world that Jesus has introduced. We don’t have to be perfect to embrace Jesus. We just need to say the time is now.