Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent (B)

Many of you may remember that when I was first ordained I served for several years as the associate pastor of a parish in Portland, Oregon.  One of my responsibilities there was to work with all of the liturgical ministries of the parish, including the cantors, musicians, and choirs.

Every year as we prepared for Advent, we had the challenge of finding hymns that were one, appropriate for the season; two, were known to the congregation; and three, were not O Come, O Come Emmanuel. 

Now, don’t get me wrong: I really love that great hymn.  But my point is that we sing it so many times each Advent that I worried we might be in danger of overusing it; of becoming numb to the emotion and meaning that its poetic lyrics and mournful tune are meant to convey.

A few years ago my favorite musical group, U2, released a song that sets modern lyrics to the baseline and tune of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

The song is entitled White As Snow, and Bono the lead singer of U2 has explained that the lyrics are meant to be the reflections of a soldier who lies dying after a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan.  

Listening to this song, and thinking about its lyrics, made me appreciate all the more the hymn it was based on, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and some of the central themes of the Advent season, which we hear about in today’s readings.  First, if you’ll indulge me, the lyrics of the U2 song:

Where I came from there were no hills at all./ The land was flat, the highways straight and wide./ My brother and I would drive for hours/ like years instead of days./ Our faces as pale as the dirty snow.

Once I knew there was a love divine./ Then came a time I thought it knew me not./ Who can forgive, forgiveness where forgiveness is not?/ Only the lamb as white as snow.

And the water, it was icy/ as it washed over me/ and the moon shown above me.

Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all./ Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon./ The road refuses strangers,/ the land the seeds we sow./ Where might we find the lamb as white as snow?

As boys we would go hunting in the woods/ to sleep the night shooting out the stars./ Now the wolves are every passing stranger/ every face we cannot know./ If only a heart could be as white as snow./ If only a heart could be as white as snow.

Again, as I said, the more I reflected on these lyrics, the more I realized that U2 had captured the essence of the great Advent hymn, and the themes we’re presented in our readings for the Second Sunday of Advent.

The soldier that lies dying, we can presume, is a young American from somewhere in the heartland.  He reminisces:  “Where I came from there were no hills at all.  The land was flat, the highways straight and wide.”  He tells us about how he and his brother would go hunting, and go out driving “for hours, like years instead of days.”

In other words, his home – the place of love and comfort that he recalls and longs to return to – is described in exactly the words that we hear in the prophesy of Isaiah from our first reading.  To prepare for the coming of the Lord, Isaiah instructs: “Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low.” 

And in our second reading, St. Peter tells us that, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”  So, we can say that the home that the soldier longs for isn’t just his Midwestern place of birth, its the valley of the Lord: Heaven. It’s that place, outside of time, where God dwells and has eliminated all the obstacles that might keep us from reaching Him.

The soldier goes on to tell us something more specific about his journey of faith.  “Once I knew there was a love divine,” he says.  “Then came a time I thought it knew me not.”

Like the exiles from Jerusalem to whom Isaiah prophecies, the soldier can recall a time when everything was going right and God seemed to be very close to him.  But in the face of exile and suffering, both the Israelites in Babylon, and the soldier in our song, have wondered if God has forgotten or abandoned them. 

The soldier is thus speaking not only about the desert of Afghanistan, or the desert of Babylon, but about the desert of our doubting hearts when he says: “Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all … The road refuses strangers, the land the seeds we sow.”

Now, the Israelite exiles in Babylon knew that their experience of the desert and their suffering were directly connected to their failure in upholding their unique covenant with God.  In our first reading, Isaiah even makes it clear to them that Israel had “received from the hand of the Lord double for her sins.”

And so too, the soldier connects his experience of the desert – connects his feeling the absence of God – to his and the world’s need for reconciliation and forgiveness.  In desperation, the soldier, like the Israelite exiles, asks: “Who can forgive where forgiveness is not?”

But he himself immediately gives us the answer to this all-important question: “only the lamb as white as snow” can “forgive where forgiveness is not,” he assures us.  Only Christ, the spotless Lamb of God can give us the forgiveness and reconciliation for which we so desperately long.

So the soldier asks, plaintively, “where might we find the lamb as white as snow,” so that our hearts, too, might be cleansed of sin and doubt and made as pure and white as snow.

Well, Isaiah’s prophecy in our first reading foretells “a voice of one crying out in the desert” – which is to say, crying out in the midst of that lifeless place where we feel we’ve been abandoned by God.  And our Gospel reading confirms that it is John the Baptist who “appeared in the desert proclaiming”: “Here is your God! Here He comes with power, the Lord God who rules by His strong arm!”

Indeed, later in the Gospels, John the Baptist sees Jesus walking and points Him out to his disciples saying: “Behold the Lamb of God, Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world!”

In our Gospel today, St. Mark also tells us that John came “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,” and that “all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins.”

And sure enough, in the lyrics of U2’s song, the dying soldier recalls a scene reminiscent of Baptism, saying: “And the water, it was icy as it washed over me, and the moon shown above me.”  His sins have been forgiven, and his heart has been made pure, by Baptism – by his being washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Friends, I said that listening to and reflecting upon the lyrics of this modern rock song gave me a new appreciation for the message of Advent that the ancient hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel, is also meant to capture.

Like the Israelites in Babylonian captivity; like the fictional soldier in the lyrics of U2’s song, we can feel abandoned by God and weighed down by our sin.  We too can cry out in desperation wondering where we can find forgiveness and peace; where we can find the lamb as white as snow.

So every Advent, we implore the Lord: Come, O Come Emmanuel, God with us. Come and forgive us our sins.  Come and make our hearts as white as snow.  Come give us “victory o’er the grave;” Come put “death’s dark shadows” to flight; Come “make safe the way that leads on high;” Come “close the path to misery.”

And like the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who went into the desert to be baptized by John; like the soldier who remembers the icy water; we take the opportunity Advent affords us to repent of our sins and to be renewed in our Baptism through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

Brothers and sisters, next Saturday our parish will once again observe “Come Home for Christmas.”  All day, from 9:00 in the morning, until the 5:00 pm evening Mass, Confessions will be heard here in our church – and we’ll gather at noon for a Penance Service. 

Please take advantage of this opportunity to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation a more regular part of your life.  Our Advent readings, and the season’s great hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel help give voice to our deep longing for God … but in Reconciliation we experience sacramentally Advent’s hopeful promise of healing and fulfillment: the assurance that through the Lamb, we too can once again be as white as snow.