Christian Reflection and Prayer

Take A Flying Leap
December 5, 2101
Second Sunday of Advent(A)

Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalms 72:1-2,
7-8, 12-13, 17; Romans 15:4-9;
 Matthew 3:1-12

"Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven
is close at hand" (Mt. 3:2). 

On his return from a trip into the wilds,
a birdwatcher told this story of an encounter
with a bear. "I was hiking through the woods,
" he said, "and came to a big clearing.
When I got into the middle of the field
I found myself face-to-face with the
biggest bear I had ever seen. He was
at least twelve feet tall and his paws
were at least a foot wide. I turned
and ran for my life toward the only
tree standing in the field. It was a very
tall tree and the first branch was a good
twenty-five feet above the ground."
"What did you do?" cried one of his
listeners. "What could I do?" the man
replied. "The bear was right behind me.
I could feel his hot breath on my neck.
So I took a flying leap for that branch."
"Did you make it?" the listener asked.
"Well, no," said the birdwatcher, "not
going up. But I caught it coming down."

In today's Gospel Lesson, John the
Baptist is preparing his followers for
the coming of the Lord. John was a
powerful preacher. He called the
Pharisees in the crowd a "brood of vipers.
" He laced into those who were always
trying to flee God's judgment, instead
of coming under it. Many made their way
to him, "and as they were baptized by
him in the river Jordan they confessed
their sins."  Then he issued a call for
radical reform, radical change. He told
the people that unless they took that
flying leap into a whole new way of life,
their souls would wither and die, like
the tree that doesn't bear good fruit and
is thrown into the fire. Matthew tells us
that "In due course John the Baptist
appeared; he preached in the wilderness
of Judea and this was his message:
'Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is
close at hand'" (Mt. 3:1-2).

Repentance penetrates the crust of piety
we wrap around ourselves to keep us
from facing it.

Repentance begins deep within and
turns life upside-down for us, and right
side up for God.

Repentance reverses our priorities,
upsets our values, turns our pockets
inside-out.

Repentance shatters our systems of
security and hangs us on the thin thread
we call the Will of God.

Repentance revolts against the sin we
have loved and reconciles us to God,
whom we have not loved.1

Anything worthwhile demands a high price.
If you want fullness of life, if you want your
life to come to something better than the
kind of dull, gray existence you see going
on all around you, there is a price to be paid.
John the Baptist sums it all up  in one word in
today's Gospel Lesson: Repent! That is the
price of Faith in the Lord Jesus: change; turn
your life around; forget the shabby old life you
have been living. It is not worth remembering.
It is not worth keeping. This means giving up
the pleasure of blaming others and looking
deep into your own soul for a clue to what
ails you. This also means that pursuing the
fullness of life Jesus offers will put you at
odds with much that is going on in today's
world. This means that a committed Christian
is likely to be out of step with things as they
are. This is part of the price to be paid when
one chooses to answer "Yes!" to the call for
repentance.

"Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell
where it comes from or where it is going, so
you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit."
John 3:8 NLT

Reflection:

Who died on November 22, 1963?
Most people would say, "President John F. Kennedy."
Do you remember where you were when President
Kennedy died.  I do.
But another great man died that day, a man that
I so much admire.  His name was C. S. Lewis.

His initials stood for Clive Staples, but to his friends
he was known as "Jack." Born near Belfast, Ireland,
in 1898, he was raised as an Anglican. But at the
age of ten his world was shaken when his mother
died of cancer. Jack wanted nothing to do with a
God so cruel as to take his mother. By his early
teenage years he had become an atheist.

Jack's spiritual pilgrimage back to God began in
1926 with a conversation with a cynical friend
whose belief in the Trinity challenged Lewis'
atheistic presuppositions.

Through the influence of various philosophers
he read and conversations with his intellectual
colleagues, including J. R. R. Tolkien, he began
to realize that an absolute Spirit or God existed
and that the events of the Bible had really happened.

By 1931, he had passed from merely believing in
God to trusting in him as his Savior.

In 1941, Lewis burst on the literary scene with
The Screwtape Letters. Books then began to flow
from his pen at an amazing rate.

C. S. Lewis is considered the most influential
Christian author of the twentieth century — quite a
leap from the atheism of his youth.

adapted from the The One Year® Book of Christian
History by E. Michael and Sharon Rusten (Tyndale)
pp 654-55

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalms 122:1-9;
Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

"So stay awake..."     (Mt. 24:42). 

There once was a small iron-working town
where the mills were kept running day and
night. The great steam-hammers, some of
them weighing several tons, were night and
day beating out huge masses of molten metal.
All night long the sound reverberated through
the streets of the village. But the townspeople
were  so accustomed to the noise that they
could sleep soundly, despite the near deafening
noise. One night, the machinery broke down
and the hammers suddenly stopped working,
and nearly everyone in town immediately woke.
They had been awakened, unexpectedly, by
the silence.

"So stay awake... The Son of Man is coming
at an hour you do not expect," Jesus says in
today's Gospel Lesson (Mt. 24:42,44).

When would you least expect Him to come?
Could it be that you are so buried in the past,
dreaming about the way things were, or so
wedded to the future, dreaming about the way
things are going to be, that now is the time you
would least expect Him to come? But today is
the day the Lord has made. Today is the day
to be glad and rejoice in. Today is the day to
shut down the noise in your anxious hearts
and allow the blessed silence to awaken you
to the Lord's presence in your life.

Some of us may be bone tired here today.
Some of us may be ready to go to sleep.
But here is Jesus saying to us in today's Lesson,
"So stay awake! .... stand ready because the
Son of man is coming at an hour you do not
expect" (Mt. 24:42,44). This is the Message
of the Advent season. We are being called to
attention! We are being called to open our eyes
to what is going on in our Christian lives. We
are being called to a new awareness of the
reason for our Advent celebration.

We celebrate, first of all, what God our Creator
did more than two thousand years ago when he
changed the course of history by sending His
own Christ Presence -- the innermost essence
of His Loving Being into our world in the form of
a tiny Babe. Part of what this season is about
is the celebration of that Event. Already,
everywhere we look, we see the Christmas
cribs and lights and stars and candles and
other symbols of the birth of Jesus. And we
can rejoice in them. But Advent is also a
celebration of what God our Creator is doing now.
For of what avail is all this celebration if Christ
is not born in our lives now -- if we do not
prepare to receive Him in the Advent spirit of the
Gospels: the spirit of repentance?