Micah 5:1-4
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1: 39-45

Bishop Untener's Homily

Looking from the Back or the Front

Sometimes it makes a difference whether you look at something from the front or from the back. Take a simple thing like a car. A car looks very different from the front than it does from the back.

We're used to looking at what Jesus Christ came to do and accomplish - our salvation, our redemption - we're used to looking at it from the back, the ending. We picture Jesus on the cross. We think of him paying for our sins... paying with his blood, drop by drop... paying with his sufferings... his painful death. It can give the impression that Jesus was balancing the scales of God's justice. When we look at it that way, we sometimes have problems. We wonder why a loving Father would demand that of his Son.

Let's look at it from the other end - the beginning, the front end - the coming of the Lord into the world. That's what we do during Advent, and at Christmas. From the front end it looks very different. We think, not about his sufferings, but rather what a wonderful thing for God to become part of our family, our human family. We're proud to have him as our brother, and proud to have him lead the way back towards God.

The Second Scripture Reading

The Church, by its choice of the first two Scripture readings, helps us understand and interpret the Gospel passage. It's interesting how the Church uses our second Scripture reading today (a passage from the Letter to the Hebrews) to help us understand the meaning of the coming of Jesus into our family.

The Letter to the Hebrews places the words of Psalm 40 on the lips of Jesus, who looks to God the Father and says: "Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, You neither desired nor delighted in." Instead of that, why did Jesus become one of us? In our second reading he says: "Behold, I come to do your will."

God's Plan For Us

God created us in God's own image. We are made for God... to be drawn into the unimaginable life and love of God, to have a share in that life and love, and to express it in our lives. God never wanted anything from human beings, other than that they would live up to be the persons He made them to be - His daughters and sons. We are made for this like a bird is made to fly. But unlike the birds, we are free. We aren't programmed by automatic instinct like the birds. We are free people.

As it turned out, human beings got off the track early on. We turned in on ourselves and became selfish, unforgiving. God didn't get angry. God was sad... as parents are sad when they watch a son or daughter ruin themselves. God, in his love, wanted to "redeem" us, "save" us. So what did God do? God said, "I will become part of the human race. I will help it get back on course. As a human being I will live God’s life and God's love to the fullest. I will be what human beings are meant to be from creation. And I will do that no matter what. I will respond to evil with goodness. I will forgive seventy times seven."

That's what Jesus came to do. And that's what Jesus did. And He did it, no matter what - even in the face of rejection. Even in the face of suffering and death on the cross. It wasn't a matter of Jesus paying a debt to the Father - giving his blood drop by drop, enduring sufferings pain by pain, so that the Father could count them up and balance the scales. It was a matter of one human being, on behalf of all of us, living as God created us to live, as loving, peaceable people. "Behold, I come to do your will."

The Beginning of John's Gospel

Now in case you wonder about that, let's stay with the beginnings, the front end of the story of our redemption. In John's prologue we read, "And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth." And, still toward the beginning of John's Gospel we read: "God so loved the world that God gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life."

Look again at today's reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, where Jesus says to the Father: "Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, You neither desired nor delighted in. Behold, I come to do your will." The "sacrifice" God wanted from Jesus was to live up to God's plan for us - to do God's will. And that is what God wants from us.

Mary and Elizabeth

Here we are, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, reading about Mary and Elizabeth, when Jesus is actually entering the human race... and we see this already catching on. When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced God's will for her, what did she respond? "May it be done to me according to your word." Mary says in effect the words that are put on the lips of Jesus in today's second reading: "Behold, I come to do your will."

Then Mary does what a true disciple of Jesus does... she takes this Good News to others - to her cousin Elizabeth. And what does Elizabeth say to Mary? "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled." Later in Luke's gospel, a woman in the crowd called out to Jesus: "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts that nursed you." What did Jesus answer? He said, "Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it."

Again, we hear an echo of those words placed on the lips of Jesus in our second Reading: "Behold, I come to do your will." That is all God ever wanted of us when God created us. And that is what we express and do every time we come to Eucharist. We listen to the Word of God, and we respond with full assent. And then the Lord is made present to us in his act of giving himself entirely to the Father's will - no matter what. He is made present so that we can join with him in doing exactly that.

In the great crescendo of the Eucharistic Prayer, with the Body and Blood of Christ lifted heavenward, we join with the Lord and say to the Father:

Through him, with him, in him,
all glory and honor is yours Almighty Father,
forever and ever. Amen."

Originally given on December 21, 2003