2nd Sunday in Advent

Our readings for the 2nd Sunday in Advent are:

1. Isaiah 11: 1-10
2. Psalms 72: 1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17
3. Romans 15: 4-9
4. Matthew 3: 1-12

• The price of change
• Very few of us like change for its own sake.  Most of us feel deep down that if some institution, some tradition, some effort is really worthwhile, it will continue, and thus prove its value.
• God seems to delight in taking a small piece of something, a remnant, and building something wonderful with that.  Think of Adam's rib, Noah's family, the small force that Gideon marched on Midian, the stump of Jesse from which Jesus sprang.
• Why do you think God doesn't just chuck the whole thing and start over? 

• What does "flourishing" look like?
• We all know what a flourishing plant looks like: abundant new growth, blossoms in the spring, fruit in the fall.  But what of justice?  What does flourishing justice look like?
• In your life, where do you see greater justice?  Perhaps more generous maternal/paternal leave programs at your office, perhaps job-retraining programs instead of layoffs, perhaps concerned citizens buying locally to support the local economy, perhaps immigration reform, maybe better attention to Title IX provisions, ...
• Do those improvements add up to a better life for just those in need, the marginalized, or do the rest of us benefit from them as well?
• What really separates each of us from the needy, the voiceless?
• Could that ever change?
• Should it?

• Mercy all around us
• How would you define mercy?
• When has God ever shown you mercy?
• How did that mercy change you?
• Are you more merciful now than you used to be?

• Good fruit is hard to find
• The fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control Galatians 5: 22-23).
• Who are some people in your life who show one or more of those fruits in abundance?
• How did they get there?
• Why don't you ask them?

• Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. What is God building me into?
2. What am I willing to do to bring peace?
3. How am I growing in mercy?
4. What fruit am I nourishing in my life?

Back from the Desert

It had been a long, hard ride out to the desert
Sand eventually getting everywhere in my robs
Grinding into tender skin as a reminder
That our forefathers worked hard to get here
To the land flowing with milk and honey.

He looked me straight in the eye
When he sent my head under the water
And baptized me into readiness
For some coming Messiah.
I came up changed, freed, renewed.

And now, now I need to get home.
And somehow tell my wife what happened,
And find out how real this really is
This conversion that I've experienced,
This newness that I feel.

Because, if I cannot get her to understand,
Then no one will understand,
And if no one understands, I have to wonder,
Whether anything really happened at all?
Or if it was a wasted trip.

How then shall I live now?
Abandon everything and wait for Messiah?
Start praying daily to get closer to God?
Give more at the Temple?
Or try to pretend that nothing really happened?

But something did happen, I know it,
And I just need to give it a name so that I can call it
When I feel down, uncertain, lost
With no clear direction anymore,
No, clear guiding light in this life.

Something, someone, some cosmos
Reached into me and touched me
And I was one with everything
For just a moment.  I laughed and cried,
I suffered with the oppressed through the centuries,

And I knew that there was so much of life
That goes unappreciated because its not comfortable
And now I want to ponder it all, before, during, and after
Until I find the peace of the desert
In my right here and now

In my life.

Merry Advent!