Today’s Gospel selection (Mt 11:11-15) may seem a bit odd.  First Jesus seems to venerate his cousin, John the Baptist, but then ostensibly casts John in a less than exuberant light:

“Amen, I say to you,
among those born of women
there has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
From the days of John the Baptist until now,
the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence,
and the violent are taking it by force.”

I note a bit of exasperation in Jesus’ address to the crowds here. Earlier in the 11th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks the crowd what did they expect to find when they sought out John the Baptist preaching in the desert.  In today’s passage, it appears that Jesus is giving John his due as the herald and preparer for the coming of the Lord; however, there seems to be a clear distinction between preparation and the ‘kingdom of Heaven.’  Jesus reports that the ‘kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent are taking it by force.’

For me, there seems to be in this Gospel passage a question of expectations and ‘taking’ something that we expect to be ‘ours.’ What were the crowds looking for in John the Baptist?  They may have been looking for some type of external assistance to deal with their everyday trials and aspirations.  They expected to find something that they may have considered to be a respite or safety net that would protect them from what they considered to be the sufferings of their lives.

In tomorrow’s gospel passage it becomes clearer that expectations draw off of very clear ideas and images of what that looks like. Many times we construct our own remedies for the things that we find uncomfortable and insufferable and we then use these constructs often in violent ways to try to obtain the ‘solution’ to our problems as we conceive them.   In the process, we shortcut a potentially inclusive process of addressing the WHOLE situation.

Our considerations are stifled by often self-centered interests and we go so far as to claim these ‘solutions’ as something new, without considering that for something to be ‘new,’ it may have to appear as something beyond expectations, more than what we can even possibly dream of, and sometimes something that can transform expectations into an entirely new way of seeing and being in the world. Could this be one way of looking at the ‘kingdom of heaven?’

I find it interesting that many people create wish lists for the gifts that they hope to receive at Christmas. Certainly this can be seen as a practical way of avoiding giving something unwanted to someone as a gift.  However, on a deeper level of gift-giving, What if the kingdom of heaven is a totally unexpected gift?  What if it is more than we can possibly imagine?   What if the way to HOPE for this gift is to surrender some of our often violent expectations by engaging creatively with those who we may even find mistrustful, foreign, or any type of ‘other?’  Could our very desires themselves be transformed in this way?  If this happens, then what we hope for can become intimately tangible.  This ‘kingdom of heaven’ then moves down from the skies and into our hearts here and now in a way that can bring us together quite surprisingly!

How could this type of transformation change the ways that we approach the big issues of our day, e.g., prejudice, racism, immigration, and xenophobia (only to name a few)? Aren’t these the questions that make this Advent season relevant?  Christmas, as the celebration of the Divine becoming Human need not simply be an historical tradition centered on God born as a baby human.  Indeed, it would seem that this ‘kingdom of heaven’ notion, as the surprising newness that we can receive over and over again, can burst forth if we bracket our own mindsets or at least loosen them enough to begin to listen to an “other,” whatever or whoever that may be.

Isaiah (Is 41:13-20) the prophet tells us quite frankly that we are not alone in our efforts to deal with the struggles and sufferings of our lives:

“I am the LORD, your God,
who grasps your right hand;
It is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I will help you.”

We fail to realize, though, that this ‘right hand’ IS Christ, Who is found here on earth here and now within each of us. Isn’t this one of the concrete mysteries of what the Incarnation signifies? The Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, tells us that, “…in Christ the gap between God and man has been bridged by the Incarnation, and in us the gap is bridged by the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit…For we have become other Christs!”[i]  So, the gift of the Divine is given and giving.  We are grasped by God’s hand in Christ and thus we grasp each other’s hands as other Christs.

We are allowing the Holy Spirit of ‘Christ’ within us to engage when we interact with each other not through opposition and violence but by sharing and receiving that same gift which is given to all of us – Christ. As Merton describes, “the city of God in heaven is reflected on earth in the society of those who are united…by mercy and compassion.”  And by freeing ourselves from our own pleasure and immediate satisfaction we effectively help others to become free and fulfill all of our destinies on earth.[ii] We are the very capacity for God – in the Holy Spirit, touching each other. Without violence, we ourselves can become a way of God in Christ entering into the world.

This sounds to be a tall order for sure. It takes a lot of ‘unwrapping.’  Perhaps the season of Advent is as much about ‘unwrapping’ the gift of Incarnation as it is about wrapping Christmas gifts.  What truer gift can we give to one another than ourselves?  Isn’t this the God-child in the manger ready to be received – not passively but also nonviolently?  As we passionately receive the God who is already within us in Christ, we populate the ‘kingdom of heaven’ joyfully inhabited by all ‘other Christs.’

[i] Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, edited by William H. Shannon: (Harper One, 2003), p. 46

[ii] Ibid, p. 52.

Peace,

Thomas