Second Sunday of Advent

Fr Ken among
Knights of Columbus

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

The Good News of God’s Kingdom sometimes comes down as bad news. There are a great many calls to repentance and frequent vilifying remarks about sinful behavior. The Hebrew prophets, followed by John the Baptist, seldom have any flattering remarks about God’s chosen people, their kings or priests, their city or nation. When they issue good news it is that God has forgiven them, favored them, and will save or has already saved them.

A society that concerns itself with success, self-esteem and a positive self-image and is reasonably comfortable with its situation may have little interest in warnings about sin or glad tidings of forgiveness. Surrounding itself with powerful armies, enormous navies, ferocious marines, terrifying air forces and daunting coast guards, not to mention national guards and state, county and local police forces it hardly needs a benevolent deity. And a God who continually warns of its sins – its failure to care for the unborn, the elderly, the poor, the sick and the alien – will probably be ignored.

Personally I take some comfort in knowing the Word of God was no more welcome among the ancient Israelites than it is in modern America. Jerusalem may have been dominated by its most sacred shrine, Solomon’s Temple, but it was also peppered with smaller shrines to many Canaanite and foreign deities. Many of the pilgrims who streamed into the Temple also paid their respects in the lesser houses of worship, visiting other heavenly patrons. Canny politicians who knew how to retain the loyalty of their subjects also paid homage to the lesser gods and endowed their shrines with ornaments of gold and silver.

Certainly Solomon’s Temple was the grandest of them all and honored the Hebrew deity whose name – YHWH – must never be pronounced. Those Israelites who claimed ancestry from Moses and the Egyptian slaves had pride of place in Jerusalem; but there were always foreigners, Canaanites and Philistines, throughout Israel and their religions offered certain advantages to less scrupulous consumers.

If it were not so we would not hear the Prophets raising hell about it -- as American Christian preachers do today.

To be sure, many Yahwist faithful never deviated in the faithful love of Moses’ God. Theirs was the tradition that survived the tribulations to this day. And it will survive our day as well. The Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions have seen nations and empires rise and fall. Each of them has been many times declared dying or dead beneath the clay feet of other now-forgotten deities.  

And still we hear, “a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.” If it were not a stump we would not be so surprised at its vitality.