Isaiah 9: 2–7; Psalm 96; Titus 2: 11-14; Luke 2: 1–20
This is the homily given at St. John’s in Huntingdon,
PA and at Trinity in Tyrone, PA by Fr. Gene Tucker on Monday, December 24, 2018.
"KNOWING
GOD’S NATURE BY OBSERVING GOD’S ACTS (PART II)”
(Homily texts:
Micah 5: 2–5a & Luke 1: 39-55)
(This
is Part II of a two part homily series, the first part of which was offered
yesterday, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent.)
Since
this is the sequel to yesterday’s homily, perhaps we ought to remind ourselves
of the main points that were made in that first homily:
Knowing God’s nature is possible through
the things that God does: We said
yesterday that God is a God who reveals Himself. What we know about God is
entirely due to God’s own actions. His nature can be seen in the things that He
does. (We remarked yesterday that the same is true for us human beings.)
God often works with the lowest, the
powerless and the least: We noted yesterday
that God chose to work through the Blessed Virgin Mary to bring about His plan
of salvation, by which we are saved through the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Mary, we said yesterday, was, most likely, a young teenager from a
backwater place called Nazareth. She was, most likely, also from a poor set of
circumstances. And yet, it is through Mary that God chose to work to make His
plans known. God often works in this this way….the Old Testament records many
similar deeds as God chose those we would least expect to be God’s agents. To
cite but one example, God sometimes chooses the younger son, not the oldest, to
do His work.
Now,
tonight, let’s look at the very familiar Christmas Gospel., from Luke, chapter
two. It’s one that many of us could, perhaps, recite from memory. (Some of us
who are of “riper” years might even be able to recite it in the traditional
language of the King James Version.)
That
very familiar text tells us something about how God works.
As we
look at the sequence of events that unfolds in Luke’s Gospel account, we see
two themes emerge:
- God is doing a great and wonderful thing: Luke tells us that the shepherds who are keeping their sheep in the fields are told by an appearance of angels that a savior has been born to them, one who is Christ, the Lord.OK, I can’t resist saying this, but when is the last time any of us saw angels in the skies, telling us that God has come to save us? Perhaps our familiarity with this text might make us a little unresponsive to the awesomeness of God’s act in sending Jesus Christ to take up our humanity. (I continue to believe that those biblical texts with which we are quite familiar often tend to “flatten out” in our hearing and understanding of them. That is to say, they may tend to lose their dramatic nature.)
- God is doing this great and wonderful thing quietly: There’s the other part of the nature of God’s acting. Notice how few people knew that that baby boy who had been born in a manger in Bethlehem was the long-awaited Messiah, the Christ. Very few knew. The midwives who attended Mary, the owner of the stable or the manger (or wherever the birth took place), the shepherds, and perhaps a few townspeople knew. But few others knew.
In time, of course,
others would know, including the Wise Men (Magi) who had come to pay homage to
this new-born king. (That is Matthew’s focus of attention, by the way). And,
because of the Wise Men’s visit to King Herod, he also knew. But in time, more
and more people would come to know: Those who witnessed the miracles that Jesus
did; those who were healed, or who witnessed those healings; those who found in
this Jesus a leader who deeply cared for and loved them, in contrast to the
corrupt leadership of the Temple priests, the Scribes and the Pharisees. And,
in the fullness of time, the entire world would come to know, largely through
the witness of those first Disciples-become-Apostles.
But this great,
big, awesome and wonderful thing that God was up to began quietly, almost
unnoticed.
What is the
implication for us, if God often works to do great things quietly?
Perhaps simply this: I think we often want God to do something
dramatically and decisively. We often want God to put up a billboard along the
road, to do something that’s unmistakable and powerful, or to send some message
in the sky. (Make no mistake, God is capable of doing just that, and – as our
Advent theme tells us – someday, God will act dramatically and decisively to
let the entire world know that Christ has come as judge.)
But more often than
not, God works quietly, often slowly. But God is working powerfully, nonetheless.
What that means for us is that we need to keep looking to see the signs and
markers of God’s moving in our lives and in the lives of others around us.
AMEN.
