4th Advent God comes to us!

It is great when something old, but good, gets innovated and becomes something more, even better. Last week I was at a local restaurant with a friend. He ordered a cocktail, I was not going to have one. He ordered an Old Fashioned, which is made with whiskey or bourbon. However, they made it with Mezcal. He sipped it and said it was great. I took a sip, AMAZING. I ordered one.

Innovations can make life different, even more enjoyable, livable. We like to think this country thrives on innovations. Companies use the term innovation to promote themselves. Yet, innovations can also challenge us; some people don’t like them. People stay focused on the original (a la new coke); locked into original modes of thinking, acting… This can be detrimental at times. Once many many decades ago, I went to Ohio to visit my folks. Dad wanted to grill burgers. They had chiles growing in the garden, so I said how about we roast those and put them on the burgers, a western innovation. You would have thought I had asked for the moon to drop from the sky. I showed them how, they liked it. But they did not ever do that again to my knowledge.

People can be the same with our Faith and life in general. When it comes to our Faith, we can assume that it has always been the same way; from the moment of Jesus to now. And people can get locked into certain practices, concepts, attitudes that actually are either not helping them become better persons, or have actually become harmful. Traditions are wonderful, but there is a larger invitation out there; an invitation to live fully, in this life now. And it means we may need to change.

Our conversion, our transformation as persons into those Children of God, to become our truest selves as God intends, is a life-long process of change and innovation.

The amazing Gospel of Luke highlights God’s innovation! God shakes things up as part of the plan of our salvation. Luke puts together the story of Zechariah and Mary; the conceptions of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Zechariah and John represent an Old Testament reality. We hear echoes of that in the first reading, a couple desire a baby but have difficulties. God intervenes and makes it happen. We will hear this same situation several times in the Old Testament, and each time God does the same thing. Zechariah and Elizabeth have the same desire, they have wanted a child. God intervenes as God has done in the past, yet Zechariah can’t believe it. This priest who would have known the history, the tradition, fails to believe; yet God still gifts them with the child. For this part then Zechariah is rendered speechless until the child is born.

The innovation comes with Mary and Jesus. Mary has no wish for a child, in fact to be pregnant in her unmarried state would be scandalous. Mary too would have been raised in the tradition of her people; she would have known the stories, hence her pondering the situation. God comes to her and invites her to accept an invitation to an innovation, to something new and better. Correct, Mary was not wanting a child at that time, but God was. This would not be an ordinary child, this would be God born as human. This would not happen in the ordinary ways. God will be doing something new and this will change everything. Mary with her humility accepts the invitation to this innovation, and the rest is history.

Jesus signifies God’s great plan, God’s will, God’s desire for humanity. A desire for us to trust in God, to walk with God and live with God in our lives. Jesus reveals God’s will for us to know God; God who loves us, who does not desire our placation nor appeasement, but wants us to trust in God's own love. 

What an innovation that is! For millennia people thought they had to appease gods, placate gods with sacrifices, with tokens. How wrong they were. And people also thought the one True God needed to be appeased as well with sacrifice.

Jesus reveals the truth of God.

Jesus invites through his life, death and resurrection to live differently, in this better understanding of God. Just as he lived it, even unto death; and from which he was raised.

When we grasp this Good News of God, we begin to see that God works for us and with us to bring out our inherent goodness. We do not need to earn it, or beg God for it.

We do need to trust in God’s love, and be open to living differently, to innovate our own lives. We can trust that in forgiveness, we can love again and live with better relationships. We can trust that in mercy, we can heal others. We can trust that in generosity we can help God to lift others up too. We can realize that the old ways of greed, violence and bitterness will not bring us fullness of life.

That new life is celebrated each week in our Eucharist. God sends the Spirit upon the bread and wine, they change into the very person of the son of God, given to us as an invitation to live. Mary, Joseph accepted that Invitation. We remember that today! It reminds us of how God works in our lives even to this day. Inviting us to something more, something greater, something tastier. 

Christmas is tomorrow, a celebration of God’s love for us, of God’s great call to us to live better. Will we?

.