Sunday reflections

Fresh from her encounter with the angel Gabriel, “Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country” to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was herself pregnant in her old age. This meeting of two Spirit-filled pregnant women, seeking to understand what God is doing in their lives, is remarkable in the way it captures their very human interaction and their prophetic voices.

The two themes of Sunday’s readings are repentance and joy. We do not usually associate these two themes with each other, but they go hand in glove in the kingdom of God.

At the year’s end, God comes – Christ is coming – as a baby at Christmas, coming into the dailiness of our lives, and at the end of time. It may seem odd at the beginning of Advent to hear Jesus speak of the second coming, but when Jesus says we’re to watch and stay awake, he doesn’t say it to play on our fears. Instead, he calls us to be alert to the signs of God’s presence in our lives, encouraging us to have faith in God who is present in the person with whom we are talking, and in the smallest act, though we may only come to understand this sometime later.

At the year’s end, God comes – Christ is coming – as a baby at Christmas, coming into the dailiness of our lives, and at the end of time. It may seem odd at the beginning of Advent to hear Jesus speak of the second coming, but when Jesus says we’re to watch and stay awake, he doesn’t say it to play on our fears. Instead, he calls us to be alert to the signs of God’s presence in our lives, encouraging us to have faith in God who is present in the person with whom we are talking, and in the smallest act, though we may only come to understand this sometime later.

What is the Kingdom of God? Gerald Darring, a retired high school and college teacher of theology, explains it this way: “The Kingdom of God is a space. It exists in every home where parents and children love each other. It exists in every region and country that cares for its weak and vulnerable. It exists in every parish that reaches out to the needy.

Next week, we will bring this liturgical year (Year B/Mark’s Gospel) to an end, with the celebration of the Feast of Christ the King. Another year has passed. It’s a fitting moment then to think about the passing of time and, indeed, of the end time and the passing away of the world.

If you sit in church long enough you will hear it read that Jesus brings a kingdom, or rather, the capital ‘K’ Kingdom—the Kingdom that never comes to an end, unlike all the others that have appeared in history. He’s relentlessly talking about it in the gospels.

From the moment in Chapter 12 of the Book of Genesis when God promises salvation to Abraham, the story of the Old Testament people is one of them repeatedly being called to faithfulness. In the Book of Deuteronomy, we listen to Moses, who having just received the Ten Commandments, now tells the people not to regard these Commandments as a list of instructions to be obeyed, but words to be written on their hearts.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and, on the journey, he has been emphasising what it means to be his disciple. Peter does not get it, refusing to accept that Jesus must die on the cross. The rich young man does not get it, turning away because the cost of discipleship is too high.

This week’s reading from the Book of Wisdom illustrates the kind of thinking that was common in the ancient world: If God is with someone then, assured of God’s protection, they will prosper. If, on the other hand, they are suffering and not prospering, then it must be that God is not on their side.