Life and death, seeing and believing in God’s love and mercy are at the heart of the story of the bronze serpent. Just as the serpent was lifted up and the people found life, so will Jesus be lifted up and those who believe in him will find life. In the gospel this week, God’s saving activity is expressed in terms of ‘love’. God’s love is explicitly related to the gift of Jesus, God’s Son, for the salvation of the world. Salvation resides in acceptance of Jesus while judgment is the refusal to accept Jesus as the revelation of God .Later in the gospel, Jesus will again reference the bronze serpent story in an expansive embrace of all creation: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself.”
When Jesus called himself the new temple, he was claiming to be the centre of the universe and the presence of God in the midst of the community. When we accept him in faith, we are accepting these claims. We may profess this belief, but do our lives reflect it? To say that Jesus is the wisdom of God means that God’s wisdom is made known in him and that he is the way that points to God. While laws often embody distinctive cultural values or customs, as wisdom of God, Jesus crosses cultural boundaries and breaks down cultural distinctions. As the wisdom of God, Jesus fulfils the expectations of any and all codes of law. Both the law and the temple witness to the power of God in the lives of believers. However, both institutions pale in the light of Jesus who is identified as the power of God. This divine power is not revealed in lofty precepts or in magnificent stones, but rather in the broken and pierced body of Jesus Christ. How willing are we to accept him?
Jesus’ Transfiguration puts our sacrifices in context, reminding us that Lent is more than a season of self-denial . The only reason we deny ourselves anything or commit ourselves to actions of service for these 40 days is to grow more deeply in love with the God who loves us into life. Penance is not meant to attack our self-esteem, it’s intended to help us sort out what really matters, to cast some light in the darkness of our lives and to focus on the relationship which gives meaning and purpose for this world and the next. The God of Mount Tabor is not interested in each of us feeling isolated as we fulfil the letter of a legal code. He wants all of us to have hearts that listen to the Gospel of love so that we can gain the power to transform the world through the sacrifices of our daily lives. On a much gentler scale, Sunday Mass is meant to be a weekly mountaintop experience for us where we hear God call us by name and confess his love for us; where we feel re-energised for the commission we have to bear his light to the world. In this context anything we can do this Lent that helps remove the blocks in our full response to his love, must be worth the effort.
Both the Gospel and the Season of Lent take us on a journey in which Jesus is at the centre and stresses the importance of our encounter with Him. We follow him through his time of teaching to his death on Good Friday and his rising on Easter Sunday from the dead. These weeks give us space to reflect on the journey of our own lives and the places where we have drifted far from Jesus’ path. Lent invites us to ask ourselves what matters most deeply to us and to return to Jesus who remains close to us. Jesus’ message is simple and life changing. He reminds us that God is with us in all the hard places and questioning of our lives and we can remember and treasure the times and places of God’s presence. Lent is also a reminder that God’s coming is near and the time of waiting for God to act is over. The challenge for his hearers is to pay attention, to believe this great news, and to respond to it.
Jesus is not deterred by human suffering. He welcomes all who approach him; his healing touch reincorporates those who have been ostracised; his loving embrace reassociates those who have been alienated. In the reign of God, there are no outsiders. All belong to Jesus, and, therefore, all belong to each other. When the one afflicted is embraced by the community, the community is an authentic manifestation of the inclusive reign of God. In suffering we witness human vulnerability and our desperate need of each other and of God. There, at the edge of life and on the fringes of the community, we may experience the tenderness and compassion of God. The loving touch of Christ that can heal our souls, if not our bodies. It is there that we may most authentically participate in the cross of Christ. Joined to him we are anything but unproductive or worthless.
Suffering comes to everyone. It can take such a hold of us that the happiness of the past is swallowed up, the beauty of better days is forgotten, and the hope of a brighter future is imperilled. Life ceases to be an adventure and takes on the guise of drudgery. At such times suffering appears to be our permanent fate, and life seems too short for suffering to run its course. If we become identified with our distress, we will be tormented. Jesus knew the harshness of life, because he was one of us. He saw it in the lives of those he loved, and he was touched by their torment. He came to release people from the demons that possess them, from the illness that undermined their lives. He came to bring the reign of God, the reign of peace and fulfilment. He came to heal the broken-hearted, to bind up their wounds.
Discipleship requires a change in us. We want to change because in so many ways we are being strangled to death by demons. We are caught in dysfunction and sin; we live in the midst of the battle between good and evil, the struggle of human finitude and failure. We are plunged into the throes of human suffering and pain, and there seems to be no escape. When we are released by Jesus from the demons that possess us, we are freed from the stranglehold of evil and liberated to live far less encumbered and divided lives. No Earthly reality will possess us, neither relationships nor obligations nor even religious practices. Rather, we will be possessed by Christ who liberates us for the reign of God. Therefore, whether married or unmarried, whether in the midst of the community or at its margins, we will be able to heed the voice of God in our hearts and to recognise Jesus in our midst.
In the peace and joy of this wonderful season, we wish all connected with our parish communities a truly blessed and treasured time, and may God continue to be present to us, and all with whom we share His wonderful gift of life and love, this Christmas.
The waiting of Advent is over. In the face of the impossible, God works the possible. During Advent, we have been waiting for the realisation of the promise made to David. We have been waiting for Mary’s yes. With this yes, hope is enlivened, and history is changed. There is an unimaginable future for all people, a future that comes from God. Salvation is created among us, and the fate of history is altered by a godly presence. This salvation resides in the hearts of those who believe in the gift, and who stay awake eagerly to know its coming. With David we await it, with the nations we long for it, with Mary we behold it.
Traditionally, the third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday of Joy. The joy of this Sunday comes both from the message of the readings and from the anticipation that Christmas is nearing. As described in the Isaian passage, the Messiah is the one imbued with the spirit and with the power of the prophet, the one who will fulfill the promises of God. It becomes obvious in the Gospel that the Messiah is the one proclaimed by the Baptist. John cleared a path for the coming of the anointed one, and from that time on the lives of believers have been the pathway through which the Messiah has entered the world.