NewCreation

Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the fourth Sunday in Advent. We start with a wonderful reading from the second book of Samuel concerning David, and it's to enable us to understand how the Gospel is, in a certain degree, King David running backwards. Because here we have David — David has made it. He started off, you remember, as the pretty boy whom his brothers didn't think would ever stand up and be worth anything, but he was the one who was appointed to be king. Eventually, after a long and difficult time, he becomes king, and then it is said that he was able to rest. So in other words, he's settled in his house, and he's aware that he's been brought there by God. And so he assumes that God must be something rather like him — a successful king. So he calls the court prophet and says to him: "See now, I'm living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." In other words, God needs to be my vision of myself, multiplied by something much, much bigger. And the court prophet, as court prophets do, goes along with what the king wants. The court prophets always sided with power. And in the middle of the night, the Lord speaks to the court prophet and basically shakes him up completely, and says: "Now you've got to go and tell the guy he's got it all wrong. He's a shepherd. I took him from the place of shepherding. I don't need a great big house. I want to accompany people as a shepherd accompanies people." So tell him that he's not going to build me a place, but that I will build him a house, and that house will be the real thing. It will be a real gift for Israel. It will be the fulfillment of my love to them, and it will take its time. I hope you can see that this is going to be really important when we read, on Christmas night, the shepherds in the field being the first to hear, and being told to go to see this sign given in the house of David. In other words, God took the shepherd boy, and now he's going to come back announced and understood by shepherds. This is the lowliness of God, and God's — if you like — rejection of power. And having to call up both the king and the court prophet — they're not going to it. The mystery of the coming in of the Lord, the Lord who is going to come in himself, is going to be shown slowly and off-stage and not in any of the expected places. And so it is that we come to the Gospel of Saint Luke, where the angel Gabriel turns up. Why the angel Gabriel? Well, the angel Gabriel had been the one who had prophesied in the book of Daniel the length of time, the number of weeks of years, that there would be in between what he was telling the prophet Daniel about and when the fulfillment would come. So the angel Gabriel is the sign that the fulfillment has come. And he comes to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. As we know, it's not quite clear between Luke's Gospel and Matthew's Gospel whether it was Joseph who was of David's line, or Mary who was of David's line, or both. But here is the point: these are, if you like, much, much more lowly relatives of the former kingly line. These are people who have not risen socially since the time of the importance of the family of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her — the angel came to her. It doesn't say he showed himself to her; it doesn't say he was visible. He had become visible to Zechariah, but he just goes in to her and speaks. So it appears that the visitation, if you like, the Annunciation, was verbal rather than visible. Zechariah got the vision of the angel in the holy place; the virgin — it's the word, it's the hearing. "Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you." And then there's this little phrase which I think we vastly underestimate. "But she was much perplexed by his words, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be." It's interesting that the "much perplexed" — or "she was troubled," as our translations typically say — we very often imagine, because we are used to pretty pictures like wonderful ones by Fra Angelico and so on of the Annunciation, a slight perplexity as to what's going on. But I want to bring out that the word diatarássō is actually a very, very strong word. It means mega-perturbed. In fact, it's a unique word in the whole of the Greek Old and New Testament — the Septuagint and New Testament — there's only one appearance of this mega-perturbed word. The normal word, which is the word for troubled or perturbed, is a word which comes up in a whole variety of places, and it's not just a mild "hmm, curious" — it's something much, much more shocking than that. To give you an idea: when Lot and his family had had their house surrounded at night by the good citizens of Sodom, who were trying to rape the angels — or at least the daughters — but who were certainly acting very violently. The angels, the next morning, say, "Come on, we're going to take you away from this place, because it's going to be punished." And the Greeks said they were troubled; in other words, the Hebrew says they lingered — in other words, they were paralyzed, they couldn't move for fear. That's the kind of perturbation it is: not being able to move for fear in the face of tremendous threatened violence — the threatened violence of the dwellers of Sodom on the one hand, and the threatened violence of the Lord in being about to destroy the place. That's the kind of mega-fear we're talking about. If you look at words where angels and trouble come together, that's the kind of image that you get. But typically, the place where this trouble comes up is in relation to wrath. A little bit later in 2nd Samuel, there is a hymn which describes the earth being troubled at the wrath of the Lord coming in, and the earth and the heavens actually being perturbed in this way. It's the sign — it's how you react when wrath is upon you. That's the sense of trouble. What wrathful thing is going on here? You can imagine: here is a young girl, and the first reaction to the arrival of an angel is, "Oh, curious, I wonder what this angel is" — you know, the Hallmark angel. No. The first reaction is: wrath is upon me. How — what's going to go on? What's going to go on here? So it says she tried to work out what on earth might be going on. This is a terrifying first reaction. So it's scarcely surprising the very first thing that the angel has to say is, "Do not be afraid." And this is a vital part of the Gospel — it's the difference between the expectation that the coming in of the Lord was going to be in some sense a wrathful coming in, a shaking of the earth in terror at the arrival of the Lord the King, and the angel saying, "Actually, it's not going to be like that." So the angel explains to her. She'd been puzzling over in her mind what on earth this sort of greeting might be — in other words, is this an announcement of wrath? What's going to be my role in it? And then the angel says, "Do not be afraid, you have found favor with God" — in other words, God likes you. God likes you, and you're going to be part of something for God, that is going to be part of God's project. "And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus." Well, any normal maiden suddenly informed that she's going to bear a son will have had a good deal of of reason to have been profoundly afraid of wrath. This is what happens if you are an unwed mother in an honor society where these things can be taken to death very, very quickly. It is extremely difficult for someone to learn that they're going to become, in the midst of all this potential for wrath, a positive vessel of God's favor and love. "He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High." This is a technical term. This is the firstborn — this is the Davidic firstborn of the Lord. The prophecy of Isaiah, the understanding that the firstborn of the Lord, the firstborn Son of the Lord, was Lord himself, would be born in the holy place, and will then come out to perform the sacrifice for the people of Israel. So the prophecy that's being fulfilled is really quite shocking, but it's relocating it from a place of wrath to the holy place, the holy place from the Temple. And just a word here about "Son." "It will be called the Son of the Most High." Because when we think of the word "son," we also think of the word "father" or "mother" — two separate persons: there's the father and the mother, and then there is the son. But in the understanding of God, it's understood that the Son of God is God's self. The Son of God is God's self manifest in human form — we would say manifest as a human. In other words, it's not some distant relative of the Most High; it is the Most High in person, is what we would say. That is what is going to come here. That's what the birth of the Son means: it means the human manifestation, in real presence, of the self of the Most High. So this is the announcement of the fulfillment of what we had in Isaiah and all the prophets. St. Paul refers to the mystery that was held in secret, referring also to Isaiah. David and Mary answers quite sensibly, "How can this be, since I do not know man?" She wants to understand what's going on here. And the reply is to say: "No, you are about to become the holy place of God. The power of the Most High will overshadow you." This is how the power of the Most High was over the tabernacle, over the tent. "You are about to become the Holy of Holies; you are effectively the Ark of the Covenant." And that is exactly how Elizabeth, her cousin, would greet her when she went to visit a few days later. So this is what we're being prepared for: the coming into the world of the Son, God's very self, in the holy place, and the virgin being taught to discover that this is who she is called to be. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.