everyone, as we begin the holy season of Advent. This
Welcome, everyone, as we begin the holy season of Advent. This season is designed to be a time of preparation. Yes, we are preparing for the season of Christmas, when we remember and celebrate when Jesus Christ came to us for the first time, but that is not the main preparation of this season. No, we are preparing for a much more important event, when Jesus Christ comes to us for the second time, and inaugurates the kingdom of heaven. That is where salvation history is headed, and so we set aside a special time every year to remind ourselves to be prepared. When I was in minor seminary, my summer job was exterior painting. The brother of another seminarian had hired me to be on his crew, and after a couple years, he told me I was ready to have my own crew. So I found a few other seminarians for my crew and taught them the basics of the business. One thing I told them was the importance of cleaning up the worksite at the end of the day – put the ladders away, clean or wrap up the paint brushes so they wouldn’t dry out, fold up the tarps, collect any garbage, etc. Just a basic part of the job. Well, one day, I had to get to the site earlier than usual to drop off some more paint, and I saw a 30-foot ladder leaning against the apartment building we were painting, the spray nozzle hanging from the top rung, the tarps still spread out underneath it, and no one around. At the end of the previous day, one of my crew members had just stopped painting and left, without doing the work he was
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supposed to do. When I told my boss, he said he didn’t want him working for the company anymore, and I had to let him go. He wasn’t prepared for the possibility that I would get there before him, and it cost him his job. I hope he learned a lesson from that, because that is the situation that Jesus describes in today’s gospel. He says, “It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work.” That’s us, today. That’s the world. Jesus has traveled abroad, he has gone to heaven, and he has placed us, his servants, in charge, each with our own work. One day, Jesus will return, and we have no idea when that day will be, and so he tells us to be watchful. Don’t be found “asleep;” be found doing our own work in which we have been put in charge. Two important questions that we should ask ourselves after hearing this: first, do we know the work we are supposed to be doing, and second, are we doing it? My crew member knew the work he was supposed to do, it was a straightforward list of tasks. When it comes to our work for God’s kingdom, it isn’t quite that clear cut. The work that Christ has given us, what we call “our mission,” is to go and make disciples. That is what we want to be found doing when he returns unexpectedly. But what that looks like depends on our time and place. Making disciples in the 21st century looks different than it did in the 1st century; making disciples in the U.S. looks different than it does in China or Egypt.
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And we are not just cogs in a machine. We aren’t given a specific task, and just do what we’re told without any thought. God has given us the privilege and the responsibility of being His co-creators, made in His image and likeness, and we are called to use the gifts He has given us to discern how best to make disciples in our particular time and place. And that will take some creativity and imagination on our part. If we can’t even imagine reaching out to the people of Hopkins and St. Louis Park who are not here, to millennials, to Muslims and Jews and so-called “nones” and sharing with them the saving truth of Jesus Christ and making new disciples, then of course, we won’t. If what we’re doing doesn’t reach those groups, and we can’t imagine doing something different, then we won’t make new disciples. That is not doing the work Christ has given us to do. It’s not easy imagining something different than what is today. The prophet Isaiah found it difficult. In our first reading, Isaiah looked around and saw that the chosen people had strayed from obeying God’s law. So he says to the Lord, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for.” The chosen people had strayed away from their faith, and Isaiah imagines the Lord making such an awesome display of His power and His might that the chosen people would have no choice but to acknowledge Him as the Lord and obey Him.
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Isaiah was asking for too little. His imagination was too limited. The best he could do is imagine the Lord coming down with fearsome and terrifying power so that the people would be compelled to obey Him, just like someone might obey a general after a military invasion or a dictator who had complete control. God had a better idea. He had a greater imagination. Rather than come with such a terrifying display that He would compel belief and obedience, He came with an intense and burning love for us, becoming a baby who grew up into a man who sacrificed himself for us on the cross. God imagined His people loving Him and therefore trusting Him and following Him, rather than fearing Him and therefore obeying Him. It was not Isaiah’s fault that he could not imagine what God was ready to do. He was going by what had been done before. God had come down and done mighty deeds before, when He led the Hebrews out of slavery, when He gave them the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, when He led them into the promised land. It is what God had always done, and Isaiah was asking God to do it again. But if God had done what He always did, the people would have missed out on something far greater – the Savior of the world being born to us. That is the challenge for all of us, that we not allow a lack of imagination from keeping us from achieving something greater. We must let our imagination grow, so we can
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see new possibilities of making disciples, believe that the Holy Spirit can touch any heart, and so work to accomplish the work God has given us to do. That is going to be the theme of this series of homilies during Advent. We are at a decision point in the life of our parish, where we will decide the direction in which we will go with our campuses, and the decision we make will affect who we are for the next several decades. How big is our imagination? How can we best do the work that has been entrusted to us, and go and make disciples? That is the question we need to ask.
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supposed to do. When I told my boss, he said he didn’t want him working for the company anymore, and I had to let him go. He wasn’t prepared for the possibility that I would get there before him, and it cost him his job. I hope he learned a lesson from that, because that is the situation that Jesus describes in today’s gospel. He says, “It is like a man traveling abroad. He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work.” That’s us, today. That’s the world. Jesus has traveled abroad, he has gone to heaven, and he has placed us, his servants, in charge, each with our own work. One day, Jesus will return, and we have no idea when that day will be, and so he tells us to be watchful. Don’t be found “asleep;” be found doing our own work in which we have been put in charge. Two important questions that we should ask ourselves after hearing this: first, do we know the work we are supposed to be doing, and second, are we doing it? My crew member knew the work he was supposed to do, it was a straightforward list of tasks. When it comes to our work for God’s kingdom, it isn’t quite that clear cut. The work that Christ has given us, what we call “our mission,” is to go and make disciples. That is what we want to be found doing when he returns unexpectedly. But what that looks like depends on our time and place. Making disciples in the 21st century looks different than it did in the 1st century; making disciples in the U.S. looks different than it does in China or Egypt.
2
And we are not just cogs in a machine. We aren’t given a specific task, and just do what we’re told without any thought. God has given us the privilege and the responsibility of being His co-creators, made in His image and likeness, and we are called to use the gifts He has given us to discern how best to make disciples in our particular time and place. And that will take some creativity and imagination on our part. If we can’t even imagine reaching out to the people of Hopkins and St. Louis Park who are not here, to millennials, to Muslims and Jews and so-called “nones” and sharing with them the saving truth of Jesus Christ and making new disciples, then of course, we won’t. If what we’re doing doesn’t reach those groups, and we can’t imagine doing something different, then we won’t make new disciples. That is not doing the work Christ has given us to do. It’s not easy imagining something different than what is today. The prophet Isaiah found it difficult. In our first reading, Isaiah looked around and saw that the chosen people had strayed from obeying God’s law. So he says to the Lord, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for.” The chosen people had strayed away from their faith, and Isaiah imagines the Lord making such an awesome display of His power and His might that the chosen people would have no choice but to acknowledge Him as the Lord and obey Him.
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Isaiah was asking for too little. His imagination was too limited. The best he could do is imagine the Lord coming down with fearsome and terrifying power so that the people would be compelled to obey Him, just like someone might obey a general after a military invasion or a dictator who had complete control. God had a better idea. He had a greater imagination. Rather than come with such a terrifying display that He would compel belief and obedience, He came with an intense and burning love for us, becoming a baby who grew up into a man who sacrificed himself for us on the cross. God imagined His people loving Him and therefore trusting Him and following Him, rather than fearing Him and therefore obeying Him. It was not Isaiah’s fault that he could not imagine what God was ready to do. He was going by what had been done before. God had come down and done mighty deeds before, when He led the Hebrews out of slavery, when He gave them the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, when He led them into the promised land. It is what God had always done, and Isaiah was asking God to do it again. But if God had done what He always did, the people would have missed out on something far greater – the Savior of the world being born to us. That is the challenge for all of us, that we not allow a lack of imagination from keeping us from achieving something greater. We must let our imagination grow, so we can
4
see new possibilities of making disciples, believe that the Holy Spirit can touch any heart, and so work to accomplish the work God has given us to do. That is going to be the theme of this series of homilies during Advent. We are at a decision point in the life of our parish, where we will decide the direction in which we will go with our campuses, and the decision we make will affect who we are for the next several decades. How big is our imagination? How can we best do the work that has been entrusted to us, and go and make disciples? That is the question we need to ask.
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