4th Sunday of Advent, B December 20, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Do you know the secret? This advent, I’ve warned you about the end of the world. I’ve told you to follow the Holy Spirit. I’ve called you to rejoice and promised you joy as a result. But are aware of the secret to this world-ending, spirit-filled, unbeatable joy?
The secret is poverty. That might surprise you. You’ve surely heard the maxim “money can’t buy happiness,” but this goes a bit further than that. Scripture is actually pretty clear about it and the lives of the saints all confirm it. I call it a secret, but it’s really not all that hidden – not anymore at least. Jesus spells it out for us: blessed – happy are you poor. Still, St. Paul calls it secret because no one saw it coming. No one until a young woman in a small town was visited by an angel.
But there were signs all the while. Every covenant hinted at it even while it promised wealth and victory and descendants. Abraham’s covenant spoke of land and descendants but was forged in the poverty of childlessness and old age. The covenant with Moses – for all its promises of victory – was formed in the poverty of a long fast in the midst of a desert. King David, a shepherd turned king, even acknowledges the disparity of his cedar-paneled palace with the simple poverty of God’s own throne being kept in a tent. Seeing this, he is moved to act, to build God the glorious home he ought to have in the now secure city of Jerusalem.
But God’s response is not what he expected. God responds to the pious plan with a question, “should you build me a house to dwell in?” While he is clearly pleased that David seeks to honor him, his focus is somewhere else… hidden though partly revealed. “I will raise up an heir… I will be a father to him… your kingdom shall endure forever.” Again, we see the apparent offer of wealth, power, success. And indeed, with God’s help, David accumulates absurd amounts of wealth to be used by his son Solomon in building a temple so massive and glorious that it is one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Yet, the secret remained. Some of David’s greatest moments are when he must flee the city and leave behind even the ark of the covenant. Within 100 years, the glorious kingdom is fractured by his selfish grandson. In a few centuries, the temple itself was destroyed and the royal line – the one promised to endure forever – was no longer on the throne. Only in the midst of these exiles and defeats – in the midst of poverty – do the prophets, especially Isaiah, tell us more of this promised messiah-king whose kingdom would not end. Called God-hero and prince of peace, the messiah is also “spurned and avoided by men” and “struck down by God” whose will it was “to crush him with pain.”
Unlike the founder of any other religion, Jesus’ birth, life, and death were all foretold by many, many prophecies. Also unlike other founders, Jesus claimed the way to joy was through poverty, defeat, and death rather than sheer wisdom or power or just the luck to be chosen by whatever God or gods you might want. The Jewish people might have known this for, although they were chosen by God and given his wisdom in scripture, they were continually defeated, conquered, and impoverished. Yet they still had faith and hope and even joy. Even under roman rule psalms like this one were sung with genuine joy in the temple every day: “Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.”
By the time of our Gospel, the Davidic kingdom was just an idea and his royal heir was a poor carpenter in Galilee with no apparent hope of being anything more. His wife, Mary, had so embraced the idea of poverty that she had already sworn to avoid even the wealth of children – to remain a virgin forever – in order to serve God in simple, single-minded love. This is why, despite being young and newly married, Mary was surprised at the idea of having a child. Yet, this was how God chose to reveal the secret of Joy. To her was given the message that God himself had decided to become poor and dwell among us.
And the profundity of this poverty cannot be overestimated. From eternal, unutterable glory as the son of God to vulnerable baby born in a stable. From the one whose hands shaped the universe to one who earned his meager living by the work of calloused, human hands. After 30 years of obscurity, when he was finally recognized by crowds as the promised king, he refused the glory. Only once did he exhibit any kind of triumphalism – his entry to Jerusalem – and he did that partly to convict us of our hypocrisy because, just a week later, we shout for his death on the cross. And it is the poverty of a criminal’s death that brings the final word of Joy in the resurrection and ascension, the real triumph.
Christmas and Joy are almost synonymous and rightly so, for Christmas is the celebration of the second greatest poverty ever known on this earth. If we would know that joy in its truest sense, we must know that poverty in its truest sense. Christ our light, our only real joy, is found by the poor and in the poor. I am not speaking of destitution – of starving or freezing to death for lack of food and shelter. I am not saying that a job, a home, cars, and entertainment and recreation are evil. I am not saying that giving and receiving gifts is sinful. I am saying that none of those things is the source of real joy. The more we prioritize comfort and luxury and convenience the more likely we are to miss the secret, to miss out on what makes for real joy. We are all called to simplicity of life, to minimize possessions, to reduce consumption, to give til it hurts. To free ourselves for the joy of possessing only God.
There is but one catch to this promise of joy through poverty: faith. Not faith the idea or opinion. Faith, the lived reality of trust shown in obedience. The poverty of the flesh is necessary, but not sufficient for poverty of spirit. What is needed is the poverty of surrendering your will to another, to God. Mary knew that sorrow was part of life, but she also knew that physical poverty is not why. It was Eve who, long ago, tried to seize the wealth of God by disobedience and so brought misery to the world. Mary showed us all the right way to joy when, embracing the poverty of obedience, she said “May it be done to me according to your word.” Hear that word. Read it, know it, obey it, live it, rejoice in it. Happy are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God; A kingdom of joy that, unlike everything else in this world, will never end.