Homily: Prophecies Come True
St. John the Baptist's words fulfill the prophecy from 500 years earlier.
In order to truly understand today’s Gospel, we have to know a little history. Here we see St. John the Baptist calling people to prepare the way of the Lord. Luke says he is quoting the Book of Isaiah.
This quote comes from the second chapter of the Book in what scholars call Deutero-Isaiah meaning 2nd Isaiah and we do not believe it was written by Isaiah but another. The time of this writing is the end of the Babylonian Exile.
The Jews spent 40 years in exile after being conquered by the Babylonian Empire which today is Iraq. The Babylonians destroyed the temple and basically kidnapped the movers and shakers of the nation of Judea fundamentally ending it. There was a small diaspora still there but for all intents and purposes, Judah was gone. Finally they destroyed the temple.
This clearly would communicate to the Jewish people that their nation, their culture and their religion were gone.
This would have devastated them. Now forty years later, they hear a prophecy that says not only will Judah be restored but the God of Jerusalem will be worshipped by all the world. A crazy idea at the time.
So when John the Baptist proclaims these words, those who know them will immediately say: “This is the time of the prophecy.” They would hear more than just repent but more importantly the prophecy is coming. This is the fulfillment of the prophecy. This means that everything is changing. Note also, the prophecy is about 500 years old but still valid.
Forty years after this moment, the focus is on Jerusalem. The person who is the focus is the suffering servant of Isaiah, whom we now know is Jesus.
The temple is destroyed in 70 A.D and a new covenant is established. This is the time we live in now.
What is our time, however. Our time is also one of waiting and looking at signs. We are in the season of Advent when we look forward to the second coming of Jesus as we remember the first. So this is the time to prepare for a new era just as St. John the Baptist proclaimed it to the people of his time.
What would we look for. What signs would we look for and what would we see that others would not understand.
Our role here is to be signs of the world that there is more to come. Jesus is coming in a powerful way to bring an end to the understanding that there is no God and that humans are gods. Our role is to be those who are on watch as we testify to this truth. While the world continues on its business as Jesus said it would our role is to say this is not the end all and be all of existence. Focus on what could come next.
There is an interesting line that Jesus teaches in the Gospels. That in the future there will not be a stone upon a stone where the temple stood. In 70 AD that happened when the Romans destroyed the temple.
I want you to think of how devastating that would be to the Jews.
Do you know the video Papa Don’t Preach from Madonna—If you go watch it, you will see it takes place across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Madonna climbs a hill returning to her home. The scene begins with a close-up of the twin towers and them zooms out to Madonna walkin up the hill. It was produced almost twenty years before the 9/11 attacks. What happened when they fell. There was not a stone upon a stone. Think of how devastating that was, especially if you were not alive or too young to remember it. These were the tallest buildings in the world the very symbol of the American engineering spirit and they were not only damaged, these massive structures were left in a pile of rubble where there was really barely a stone upon a stone.
That is the devastation the Jews would have felt at the dawn of the Babylonian exile and at the fall of the temple in 70 A.D.
There is no question that when we put our hope only in ourselves we can realize as powerful as we are we are not gods. We can see devastation brought upon by our own race and realize that if there is no God, there is little hope in the future.
However, what is our time about. There is more and it is in Jesus Christ who promises that the next stage of the Kingdom is coming and to stand up tall when it comes for our role given to us at Baptism is over. We will finish being the signs of the coming of the Kingdom. The kingdom will come.
Remember what I said to you the other day. Jesus said that one of the signs of the coming will be stars will fall from the sky, this would be an absolute impossibility at the time. How could you describe the missiles of war today, they are like stars falling from the sky.
More signs are there now than were there in Jesus time. This does not mean that Jesus is coming tomorrow but that Jesus is coming because it is everyday His time is near.