First Sunday of Advent, Year A
Previous Years: 2019
Preached at Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/desiring-the-presence-of-jesus/
Transcript
All through Advent, our prayer is “Come, Lord Jesus,” an ardent desire that He should come again. But I struggle to pray that prayer because I’m not actually sure I want Him to come. I find when I think about the prospect of the Lord coming and ending the world, which is what will happen when He comes again, that the reaction of my heart is, oh Lord, not yet. I still have things I want to do, things I want to accomplish, boxes I want to check, certain people I might want to try to convert, sins that I haven’t decided to let go of. There’s just all this other stuff that I’ve got, all these plans that I have. So if He were to come, I think I would probably look at Him and be like, Hey, this is great, glad you’re doing this; Can you come back in ten years? 20 years maybe? I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if I actually desire His presence. I imagine I’m not alone in this. But one of the consolations that we can take is that humans are just bundles of habits. If, right now, I think being confronted by the Lord would cause me to ask Him to come back later, it’s because I am habituated to putting my joy, my fulfillment, my desires, and the accomplishments of certain things that I have not yet accomplished above God. But even though I have that habit, I can develop a different habit.
Humans are very good at that: Developing new habits, new virtues. I can instead develop the habit of desiring the Lord, desiring His presence. And I can develop that habit by spending my days asking where He can be found. We know that the Lord is alive. We know that He is powerful and we know that He is working. He is always working, but we rarely look for Him. We rarely ask, Lord, where are you working? We go about our lives reliant on our own efforts. Okay, this is what I need to do. This is what I have in front of me. This is what I can accomplish. Instead of asking, Okay, Lord, what are You doing today? Where are You acting today? Where can I find You today? But if we intentionally wake up each morning and intentionally go throughout our day asking the Lord about His presence, asking Him where He is and what He’s doing and where He can be found; if we make a concerted effort to do so, eventually that question becomes a habit. Eventually, we don’t have to think about it in the morning. It’s just what we naturally do. We wake up and we look forward to finding the Lord today. We look forward to experiencing Him somewhere, we don’t know where. That’s part of the fun. That’s the adventure. But if we make that an intentional question, at some point we don’t have to be intentional.
At some point, it becomes part of us and who we are and how we live our lives. And if that happens, if we develop that habit of seeking the presence of Jesus at all times and all places, then we will also have the habit of desiring the presence of Jesus. If I seek it, it’s something that I desire. And if I desire the presence of Jesus, then the second that I am face to face with the Lord, my habit, the way I’ve formed myself, the deepest part of my being, will rejoice at seeing Him, because I have rejoiced at all of the small ways I’ve found Him in all of the days preceding that. Even if His coming is a surprise. Even if it takes me off guard, if the orientation of my heart is I desire to see the Lord, then when I see Him, I am going to be filled with incredible joy. What’s amazing about the coming of the Lord is that at the Second Coming or at our death, both will have the same effect generally. We will be face to face with the Lord. We will see Him in His fullness. One day we will close our eyes on this earth, and then we will open them, and we will be with Him wherever He is. Facing His judgment. But we will be with Him.
Now we look for Him, though He’s still hidden. His first coming was hidden. It was in a suburb of a backwater of the Roman Empire. He took upon himself a human nature which nobody was expecting. He died a criminal’s death. If you’re looking for God, you don’t look in any of the places that Jesus actually showed up. And even now He ascended into heaven. We know that He is present in the Church, but it’s not obvious. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the four ways in which the Lord is present in the Mass. He’s present in His people. He’s present in His priest. He’s present in His word, and He is present in the Eucharist. But in all of those places, He’s hidden. He’s hidden behind the humanity of those you share a pew with. He’s hidden behind my humanity. He’s hidden in the idea that this is just words on a page, or He’s hidden in the image of bread and wine. We have to intentionally look for Him in order to find Him. He doesn’t just reveal Himself automatically. It takes some effort. But I promise you, and the Church promises you, if you look for Him, you will find Him because he is absolutely present in those four places I mentioned. He is absolutely present in your families, in your friends and your relationships, in your work, in your community. He is there. He’s hidden, but He’s there. And if you have that habit of looking for Him, you will absolutely find Him.
In addition, there are two other effects. If we develop this habit of looking for the Lord at all times. The first effect is we will find Him. The second effect is that we will be able to carry out what Saint Paul talks about in our second reading. He says, “Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy.” Notice in that list of sins, those are all things that are always carried out in the dark. Orgies and drunkenness, promiscuity and lust, rivalry and jealousy. These aren’t the sins that we live publicly in front of our community. These are the ones that we go and close our door. Or we imagine a darkened room or a darkened bar or something. Rivalry and jealousy always behind the person’s back, never to their face. This is happening in the dark. We have to hide away from the Lord and from our neighbors if we’re going to carry those out. But if we practice the presence of the Lord, if we constantly “seek Him where He might be found”, and if we find Him, as we will, then we’re always in the presence of Jesus, and those sins will just fall away because we know we wouldn’t want to do it if Jesus was looking at us.
Well, He is. If you seek Him, you know that He’s there. And when you find Him, you know that these sins have no place in your life. We behave a lot better when we’re in the presence of somebody that we love and respect. And if we’re in the presence of Jesus, our sins are going to be a lot less. And the final effect, if we seek the presence of the Lord, we will find Him. We will live holier lives. Then we have the first reading. Isaiah says, “In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.” Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t think our altar in this form is particularly functional, and if I had the money, I would fix it. But I do love it when this reading comes up, because when Isaiah is talking about “the mountain of the Lord”, he’s talking about “the temple in Jerusalem”. He says “that this temple, this mountain, will be raised above all the other mountains.” Well, our altar and our church inherit from the temple in Jerusalem. We carry out here the fulfillment of what they were carrying out on that mountain. And so today and today only I am very happy to point here and say this looks like a mountain. This is the mountain of the Lord’s house, and all people will stream toward it.
What Isaiah is saying is that “all of the nations will realize that the God of Israel is the true God, and they will come to that God desiring His presence, knowing that He can be found there”. And when they do so, when they do so, the nations will be united, because they are all seeking and worshiping the same God. He says “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” When we worship the same God, we cannot have division. If we seek the same Jesus, if all of us are seeking the same Jesus, and if we practice the presence of the Lord, if we seek Him and we find Him, and we know that we are in His presence always and desire that presence in our lives, well, then suddenly all of our divisions become healed. Anything that keeps us apart as a community goes away. I’m still not entirely sure if I truly desire that the Lord would come. I’m not entirely sure if I can desire the Second Coming, as we pray for in this part of Advent. I’m not sure if I can look forward to the day of my death, as so many saints did. They looked forward to it because they knew that would be the day they would meet Jesus face to face.
I’m not sure if I’m there, but my consolation is that I know what I need to do to get there. I know I need to seek the Lord. I need to desire His presence here on earth. Because if I desire His presence on earth, if I seek Him at every part of my day, then I will become accustomed to desiring Him, accustomed to welcoming His presence, even when it’s surprising, even when I don’t know when He’s going to show up, as we hear about in the gospel. I will be surprised with joy when He comes and makes Himself present to me, hidden in this life. And that will prepare me to be receiving Him with joy when He surprises me with my own death or with His Second Coming. That habit doesn’t just prepare me for His Second Coming, though. It also helps me live a holier life. Helps me live a life closer to other believers; to all of those who come to the mountain of the Lord. Practicing the presence of the Lord has no downside and every upside. And if you have to dedicate yourself to one thing this Advent, try to build that habit. Wake up every morning and ask the Lord where He is. Take a moment throughout your day and ask the Lord, Lord, where have I found You and where will I find You later today? If you do that when He comes, you will just receive Him with incredible joy and thanksgiving.
Fr. Moore 