_We just heard Luke’s story about the birth of Christ, but this past week I’ve been reflecting more on John’s gospel where he writes:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God....And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
I’ve often thought how important the truth of these verses are. Had the Word not become flesh, we could have completely controlled the “Word” with a doctrinal statement. Better yet, we could have encased it in a beautiful book and guarded it in our own Holy of Holies, seeing it not as something accessible, but something to be kept at a distance from the likes of you and me.
But that wasn’t the Word’s plan. Instead, god too the un-imanageable step of becoming flesh – flesh, just like you and me. and I say un-imagineable because we have been taught the flesh will lead to sin, not to God. We’ve all heard screaming preachers pound pulpits, and yell scary words that the flesh is nothing more than a slippery road to hell. In fact, the words “sin” and “flesh” have so often been joined together, that even on this night when we celebrate our God becoming flesh, some find it difficult to associate the word “flesh” with “grace and truth”.
That shouldn’t be surprising. Historically, outside of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, our church has always tended to focus on Jesus as Spirit, not as flesh.    While always teaching the vertical and horizontal aspects of our faith, the vertical has always been emphasized, as if there was some kind of danger in believing that God is in this world like one of us.
We see that struggle surfacing again in the new translation of our Mass texts. From what I can see, most of the horizontal has given way to the vertical. As a friend said, God has become more holy and our flesh as become more wretched.
At any rate, as I read the scriptures, I can picture God pacing the corridors of heaven burning with the hope that we would see the world as God sees it. But look what happened: God created humankind and put them in a beautiful garden, but we didn’t get it. God sent the floods as a warning. We didn’t get it. God sent prophets. We didn’t get it. God gave us laws through Moses. We didn’t’ get it. Finally, finally, God sent flesh, The Word, his own flesh, hoping we would finally get it. Think of it. Through flesh, the body of a woman, God’s own Son took on our flesh in the body of a man, and from that day on God has chosen to move into our neighborhoods and to live among us. Surely God thought, now we would get it. Now, with a love we can touch, with a life full of grace and truth living in our midst, how could w not get it?
All we had to do was to observe and listen and learn and follow the Word’s example. He touched broken bodies with healing. He fed hungry bodies. He clothed naked bodies. He blessed and hugged children’s bodies. He led oppressed, broken, rejected, hurting and lonely bodies back into community. He laughed. He grieved. He wept. And finally, He sacrificed his own boy, leaving us with the words: “This is my body, broken for you.”
Here tonight, in this place, as we reflect on the moment God took on flesh, let’s vow never to forget that our flesh, made in his image and likeness, is like his, full of grace and truth, and promise never to reject our flesh or to see it as sinful or a block to communion with God, but to see it as the precious gift it is, and to use it as he used his: doing all that we can to draw the outcast, the hurting, and the oppressed into the embrace of his loving arms. And let’s do it as he did: by rejoicing and grieving and laughing and weeping and loving and hugging and healing and forgiving, and so welcome them into the embrace our loving arms where they will experience God.
Then the Word will not have become flesh in vain.

_In 2008 Pope Benedict wrote: “Violence, in many cases, marks the relations between persons and peoples. Poverty oppresses millions of inhabitants. Discrimination and sometimes even persecution for racial, cultural and religious reasons drive many people to flee from their own countries in order to seek refuge and protection elsewhere.”

In our first reading today, God wants something more than a fancy temple or a new church. God wants to work with us to address the issues of our world. That’s what the coming of Christ is all about. He came to create something new for us: “I will fix a place for my people.”

He wants something new for us, and that something new is made real in our gospel story about an angel speaking to a poor young woman, promising a savior who will finally “rule” over the people and lead them to something new. “Hail, full of grace!” the angel said. “The Lord is with you.” “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and he power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

God’s reign will transcend our limited personal vision just as it did Mary’s and it will bring together, the whole world, in a new kind of justice and peace.

Today scriptures speak to our human day-to-day living, and they remind us that God really does want something different for us than all the injustice, violence, economic horror, confusion and terror that holds our lives and our world in its grips today. He wants a new reign of justice and peace, simplicity and hope, and he invites us to make that reign real. It won’t happen if we don’t make it happen.

As our governments – National, State, Local - address the huge problems in our economy, what it’s doing and not doing for individuals and families, we need to work together to be sure that the values of our faith and our church’s social teaching will be included in their solution, remembering:
First, that God invites us to not forget the poor – especially those in our country, in our community, who have been living the recession for decades.
Secondly, that Jesus taught us more about wealth and possessions and greed than anything else and that he invites us to work to create an economy focused on the common good, an economy that is concerned with something more than consumer spending, the gross domestic product, and our stock portfolio, and building more barns to store our wealth so we can eat, drink, and be merry.

And finally, that God invites us to be working to create an economy that is focused on the benefit of all people no matter how poor or how wealthy they may be. Then indeed God will have a place in which He can dwell with all people in peace and justice.

Like Mary we may ask, but “how can this be?” and like her, I pray, hear the angel say to us “nothing will be impossible for God” as long as we, with Mary, respond: “May it be done to me according to your word,” understanding it can’t happen without our yes, any more than Christ’s coming could have happened, without her yes.

_ One day the abbot decided he needed to do something about the crisis his monastery was facing.  Some of the monks had left, they weren’t getting any new candidates, and the people were no longer coming for prayer and consultation as they used to.

The 7 monks that remained were getting older, more depressed about the lack of vocations, and even increasingly bitter in their relationships with one another.

The abbot had heard about a holy man, a hermit, living alone in the woods, and he decided to talk with him about the problems the abbey was having.  He told the hermit how the monastery had dwindled and diminished, and was only a skeleton of its former self.

The hermit told the abbot that he had a secret to share with him: One of the monks now living in his monastery was actually the Christ, but he was living in such a way that no one could recognize him.

Utterly amazed himself, the abbot went back to the monastery and share with the other monks what the hermit had told him.  You can imagine the consternation of those aging monks.  They looked around at each other in unbelief, each trying to figure out who could be the Christ.  Could it be brother Mark, who prays all the time?  Possible, but doubtful.  He has such a holier than thou attitude.  Maybe brother Joseph who is always read to help.  But he’s always eating and drinking.  He never fasts.  It probably wasn’t him.

The more they tried to figure out which one of them was the Christ, the more confused they became.  The only thing each of them could figure out for sure, was that any one of them, excepting himself, of course, could be the Christ.  And because they never really were sure who the Christ was, from that day on they began to treat one another with greater respect and humility, knowing that the person they are speaking to could be the very person they were trying to identify.

They began to show more respect for one another, their common life became more brotherly, their common prayer more fervent.

Slowly people began to take notice of the new spirit in the monastery and began coming back for retreats and spiritual direction.  The word spread, and candidates began to show up and the monastery began to grow, not only in numbers,

but in zeal and holiness as well.  And all of this because a holy man of God had drawn their attention to the truth that Christ was living in their midst as one of them.

In today’s gospel John the Baptist tried to announce that same powerful message to those who were so anxiously waiting for the coming of the Messiah:  “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me;  I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Their certainty about how the Messiah was to come, and what he was going to do, made it impossible for them to recognize him.  They were sure he would suddenly descend from heaven in his divine power and majesty, and he would establish his reign by destroying the enemies of Israel.  So, when finally Jesus came, born of a woman like every other person, they just couldn’t recognize him.  He was too ordinary;  too unimpressive, just like Juan Diego, when he went to the Bishop in Mexico City, to tell him the Virgin wanted a Church built on a rocky hill called Tepeyac ,near a poor village
of conquered Indians,  a place without power or wealth.  He just couldn’t take that poor, disenfranchised, despised Indian seriously.  It was a joke to believe the Mother of God would appear to him!

Are we any different?  It’s easy for to listen to and imagine the Virgin Mary appearing to those we deem to be important.

How about the people who fry our burgers, pick up our garbage, empty our septic tanks or cross our borders.  Do we listen to them?  Do we recognize Christ in them?  Do we recognize Christ in each other?

After 2000 years we’re not much better at recognizing Christ in the ordinary men and women around us. Things like their unimpressive attitudes, habits, appearances, lack of education, and legal documents make it difficult in not impossible.

Advent is a time for us to hear and respond to John’s message of repentance.  And we need to listen and respond.  It’s the only way we will recognize the Christ in our midst today, now, at this very minute, and, that awareness will make an enormous difference in our lives both as individuals, and in the various communitiesin which we live and pray and work and play.

  The truth John proclaimed to his own people he also proclaims to us:  “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; 

_There are two points I want to make today.

The first comes from our Old Testament reading and is captured in the saying: “Feel is not Real”. A good example is a golfer who may feel he is swinging the club, gripping the club or flexing his body in a certain way, but a video reveals he may not actually be doing so. The awareness that his, feel is not real, can be a prelude to learning a new and better game. If you’re ever feeling far from God, either he’s abandoned you or you left him, the same phrase applies: Feel is not real. God is never far from you. You can break his heart, but you can’t make him stop loving you. You simply can’t sin big enough to overwhelm his greater ability to love you and to forgive you. When you turn you back on Him he is still there. Turn around and he’ll still be facing you and loving you......even if you feel he’s not.

At least that’s the message of our first reading. Israel had come to believe that because of their sin, God had abandoned them, and they believed if they did hear from God, the message would be one of punishment. But instead as we see in this section of Isaiah, that God responded with a soothing song of comfort! Comfort, O comfort my people says your God.

It’s like God was tying yellow ribbons around every tree, or spray-painting “Please come home, all is forgiven,” on the highway overpass coming into the city. And, in case we miss the ribbons or the overpass sign, God sent his son Jesus to tell us in person.

The second point is that despite the depth of God’s love for us, we don’t have to accept it. Just as we have freedom to stray from God, we also have the freedom to continue to stay away. Even when Isaiah offered the Israelites in Babylon, a powerful word of comfort and invitation to return, many still chose to stay in Babylon rather than return to the promised land.
That may seem incredible, but its really not. Most of the exiles had been born in Babylon. The land of Israel was only a memory of their parents. It was easier for them to cling to what they knew than to venture out as Abraham did into an unknown land, an unknown future.
But we can’t judge them too harshly. How many of us cling to what we know, to familiar habits, or places, or jobs, or relationships, or beliefs, – or whatever, simply because they’re familiar. Even if these things are keeping us from allowing God to really enter into our lives, we cling to them because they’re comfortable.
And that’s why the Baptist’s message of a repentance that leads to the forgiveness of sin is so important. To hear it and to respond to it, is like responding to a video of who we really are, and being loved into a whole new way of living. John knew that sin was... the feel that wasn’t real, and that unless we recognize, admit, and repent of our sin, we’ll never leave Babylon. We’re going to stay where we’re comfortable.
And then, rather than really experiencing God’s love and presence in our lives, it will be as though he never came at all, and the feast we’re preparing to celebrate, will never be more than a nice story.