2nd Sunday of Advent C

2nd Sunday of Advent C

1. Travel in antiquity was a big problem: there were no roads, just dirt paths. It was like
when the pioneers started moving West from the first colonies. If you came to a
mountain you either had to climb or find a way around it. If you came to a river you
either had to swim or find someone with a boat to ferry you across.
The biggest innovators of antiquity were the Romans. They build paved roads connecting every
province of their empire. They did it primarily for a military purpose: to move their legions quickly
from point A to point B. But secure and comfortable roads with bridges over rivers became a boon
for commerce and for communications.
The first reading states, Prepare the way of the Lord.. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain
and hill shall be made low. Preparing the way of the Lord became one of the main themes by
prophets towards the end of the Babylonian exile. This idea is expressed in 2 nd Isaiah, in Malachi and
was picked up centuries later by Baruch.

2. Baruch was composed about 160 years before Christ, during the Maccabean rebellion.
Please note that Baruchs book is found only in the Greek version of the Bible. There is no boom of
Baruch in the Hebrew versions of the Bible. So the book of Baruch is called a deuterocanonical.
Baruchs role was to support the Israelites during the Maccabean rebellion by announcing that God
was about to free them from captivity and allow them to gain independence from the Seleucid
empire. By saying that every valley would be filled and every mountain leveled, he was telling them
God would lead them to freedom but that they had work to do to remove the obstacles to gain their
independence.

3. Today is the 2nd Sunday in Advent. Note how different is the message from last week.
The massage last week was wait patiently, the Lord is coming. Today's message which
is: get ready, the time is now.
The Israelites had been languishing under foreign domination for centuries, waiting for God to free
them, and suddenly the message from the prophet Baruch was, stop crying, stand up and get ready
to free yourselves from Syrian oppression by joining the priest Mattathias and his 5 sons who rebelled
because the Syrian king had forbidden Jewish worship and placed a statue of Zeus in the Temple and
demanded that the Jews worship it.

2nd Sunday of Advent C

In the Bible, the ideas of foreign oppression and exile are metaphors for humanitys alienation from God.
Every time we sin, we go into exile. The history of salvation is the record of Gods initiative to end the exile,
to end the separation between humans and God. The history of salvation starts with Abraham and is fulfilled
by Jesus who was God but became a human being to lead us back home to God through his preaching,
through his miracles, through his death and resurrection.
Advent commemorates a crucial event of the history of Salvation: the arrival of Jesus on the first Christmas.
The long wait is nearly over with Jesus birth, the history of salvation is coming to its final stage.
But Baruch reminded the Israelites and reminds us that the history of salvation is not a spectator sport. It is
not like sitting in front of the TV and cheering for your team. Christians are not called to watch and cheer
while God does all the work. Baruchs message is: roll up your sleeves and prepare the way of the Lord.

4. John the Baptist is the bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Today,
between the first 2 readings we read the song of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist.
That is not a Psalm, but a part of the Gospel of Luke.
The birth of John follows the pattern of miraculous births in the Old Testament: Zechariah and his wife
Elizabeth are old and childless. But miraculously, Elizabeth conceives and gives birth to a child. When we
find this pattern in the Bible, it is a clear sign that this child is predestined to do have a significant impact in
the history of salvation.
Note how, the song of Zechariah links the birth of his son John to the history of salvation from the covenant
God had made with Abraham, to the promises of the prophets that God would be merciful and free his
people, and bring them salvation. His son John will be the precursor of Jesus. Metaphorically speaking, he
will prepare the way of the Lord and lead people to the wilderness to repent and mend their ways.

5. In todays Gospel reading, the story picks up several years later, when both John and Jesus are
adults, and John is preaching and baptizing people in the Jordan. There are a number of points
of interest in the way Luke presents Johns message
a. First of all , this is the only passage in the Gospels that links the history of salvation to human history: Luke
tells us the name of the emperor: Tiberius, the name of the Roman Governor: Pontius Pilate, the names of
the vassal kings who ruled the land of Israel on behalf of the Romans: Herod and Philip, and also the names
of the high priests Annas and Caiaphas.

2nd Sunday of Advent C

So the story of Jesus is connected to the history of the world and to the history of Israel: it is Lukes way of
saying that God is master of all history: God uses all of human history to lead up to this event, and also that
this event matters to the entire world, not just for Jews.

b. The word of God came to John in the wilderness. Meeting God in the wilderness is another
Biblical pattern: Moses saw the burning bush and heard the voice of God in the wilderness of
Sinai. The Israelites fleeing Egypt came to know that there was only one God and received
his laws in the wilderness. The prophet Elijah, fleeing from king Ahab and queen Jezebel, herd
the voice of God in the silence in the wilderness. Jesus before starting his ministry, retreated
to the wilderness for 40 days.
You have heard me say before that God talks to us all the time, but very often there are so many things
going on in our lives that we are not paying attention to God. There is so much background noise in our
lives in so high that we cant hear God. To hear Gods voice we need to get away from it all, stop all the
noise, pause in silence in the wilderness.

c. We need to take the time to listen to God, but Gods message from todays reading is a call to
action. We are called to prepare the way for God by removing all obstacles.
God is all-powerful and could make us do things his way whether we like it or not
But God has decided to create us intelligent and free and to ask for our cooperation, not our
submission.
We may feel powerless to overcome our weaknesses, our sins, our shortcomings. We have all
tried and tried again and failed.
We will not succeed by relying on our own strength, only God can help us do that, but God
requires us to do our share: prepare the way of the Lord by removing things that get in the way.
There are things we can do to avoid sin: avoid the occasions of sin. It is a matter of common
sense: If eating a certain food gives you an upset stomach, then avoid that food.
If the company of some people leads you to sin, then stay away from them, if certain types of
entertainment lead you to commit sin, avoid them. This is how we can prepare the way of the
Lord by removing obstacles, and if we try, God will help us.