December 21, 2017
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year B) on December 21, 2014 at St. John XXIII Parish in Knoxville, TN. The homily is based on the day’s readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-16; Psalm 89; Romans 16:25-27; and Luke 1:26-38.
Advent is the season of waiting, the season of God breaking into our lives in unexpected ways. In our first reading, God issues a promise to King David. In our gospel passage, roughly one thousand years later, the angel Gabriel announces the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise: a very unexpected pregnancy.
In these last days of Advent, let’s enter as deeply as we can into what one popular carol calls “the hopes and fears of all the years.” What were the people of Israel thinking during that millennium of waiting? Specifically, what was one woman of the house of David thinking? No, not Mary, but her kinswoman Elizabeth. For decades, Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah had prayed fervently to have a child. With each passing year, the possibility of having a child diminished. Would it ever happen?
What are you waiting for in your life?
How do you address your fears as you wait?
How do you maintain your hope?
We are so familiar with today’s gospel passage that it’s hard to remember the mood of the Jewish people at the time. The Jews were steeped in the promises that God had made for a thousand years that the house of David would last forever. In the 350 years since the Greeks had captured the kingdom of Judah, Judaism spoke of a Messiah who would come to restore the kingdom of Israel. When you’ve been told that something is going to happen, but you’ve been waiting several hundred years, it’s hard to maintain hope.
On the day that Gabriel appeared to Mary, there were only two people in all of Judea who knew that the time of fulfillment was at hand: Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth. But since Zechariah had been struck mute and Elizabeth was in seclusion, they weren’t telling anyone about it.
Advent is the season of waiting in expectant hope. Well, how can you have expectant hope, when you don’t know what to expect? In the moments before Gabriel appeared, it’s natural to presume that Mary, like most other Jews, would have not expected God to fulfill the great promise in that year, and definitely not through her.
Even the greatest figures of Judeo-Christian history doubted the promises that God had made. God promised Abraham and Sarah a child, but that promise was not fulfilled for 25 years, and Genesis records several instances when Abraham acted contrary to that promise. Hannah cried for years before she and Elkanah conceived Samuel. Zechariah and Elizabeth were well beyond the age to expect that they would ever have a child.
Although there’s never been another unexpected pregnancy like Mary’s, most of us know people whose lives were dramatically changed by unexpected pregnancies. There’s a reason why everyone knows about pregnancies: there’s something to see and talk about – a belly bump, soon followed by a baby!
But there are many, many people among us who struggle with the opposite challenge, the challenge of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Infertility is a common problem, but it’s a hidden problem. And its tragic relative, miscarriage, happens remarkably frequently. The estimates vary, but at least one out of ten pregnancies end in miscarriage… and the percentage may be as high as one in five or one in four. Yet, most couples who suffer through infertility and miscarriage carry their crosses alone. They feel as if they have failed.
The stories of Sarah and Abraham, Hannah and Elkanah, and Elizabeth and Zechariah are not especially consoling to couples struggling with infertility or miscarriage. The Bible seems to imply that if one has sufficient faith in God, one will eventually conceive a child. But that’s simply not the case. Two years ago, America Magazine published a striking article called “Waiting for Gabriel: Learning to Pray Through Infertility,” written by University of Notre Dame professor Timothy O’Malley. Tim openly talked about the pain he and his wife experienced through infertility. Whereas people get excited to talk about pregnancy, the room falls into embarrassed silence if you mention infertility or miscarriage. It’s hard to hold out hope that Gabriel will ever come, when Sacred Scripture doesn’t hold a specific promise for what you desire. If you’re struggling with infertility or miscarriage, please let me know, and I will try to connect you with other couples for support.
So, once again, in these waning days of Advent, for what are you waiting? Or, to phrase it another way, for what are you praying? It’s been said that God has only three answers to our prayers: yes, not yet, or I have something even better planned for you.
God promised that the house of David would last forever. I doubt anyone in the next thousand years dreamed that God’s plan would be fulfilled by a poor girl and her fiancé raising a baby born in a barn out of wedlock. Yet, history makes it clear: God’s plan was better than anything that we could dream of.
If God does not answer our prayers in the way we expected, I am confident that it is because God has something even better planned for us. Because whenever Gabriel eventually arrives to announce God’s plan, we will find that nothing – no matter how unexpected it is – will be impossible for God.