B Cycle – 4^th Sunday of Advent 23

Lk. 1:26-38

Today we are celebrating the fourth Sunday of Advent. That season in the church where we are invited to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ.  Yet in twelve hours from now we will be celebrating the birth of Christ. If we have not prepared our hearts to encounter Christ, then perhaps we are like the inn keepers who had no room available. Yet we know God is always willing to embrace us no matter how long we have been away or how far we have strayed from His plan for us. God invites, never demands. God offers never forces and He always gives us a choice. 

Yet I know from my own life how easy it is to ignore the invitation because we are too busy.  We are the people Jesus speaks about in the parable of the wedding feast. We have too much going on in our lives to do any more than acknowledge the presence of Christ while ignoring His invitation.    

It is amazing how the church in its wisdom gives us the story of King David today. Not just to connect Jesus with the throne of Israel’s famous kind but to discover something God wants us to grasp.

David, the youngest son of Jesse was called by God, “a man after His own heart.”  David was chosen by God to be King of Israel, anointed by the prophet Samuel, and filled with the Holy Spirit.  Before Samuel anointed him, young David had a deep passionate relationship with God, and we see that passion in his psalms.  We all know the gospel stories about his victories, his sin, his family troubles and through all those highs and lows of his life, God continued to be with him.

In today’s first reading, the Israelites are finally at peace.  All is well in the kingdom and David realizes that the symbol of God’s covenant and God’s presence among the people has not been elevated enough.  David wants to build a proper house for the Ark of the Covenant.  Yet God tells him no and in His no to David God is also speaking to us.  God’s response to David’s desire to build something for God is significant for us because it is the same message God has given us from the fall of Adam.  God wants us to allow Him to do within us everything He has promised us. To make us temples of His Holy Spirit and for us to have intimacy with Him. God wants the Holy Spirit to anoint us and to overshadow us.  He does not want us looking at the dwelling place of God but to be the dwelling place of God.     

What a contrast we have between this first reading and the gospel reading of the Annunciation.  David wants to build something that shows the world how much God means to the Israelites.  God wants to show us how much we mean to Him and how much He desires to repair what is broken within us.  He wants to heal us, renew us, take away our anxiety, our fears, our doubts, and our sense of unworthiness.  God desires to show us how much we delight Him.   God wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to transform us.  That is how we prepare our hearts to encounter the living God.

Mary’s response to the angel shows us how much we are like her in our humanity. She admits she does not understand how God can be born in her.  Her thinking is restricted by the world view of how conception happens.  It cannot happen any other way and yet with God all things are possible.  Miracles happen every day, physical, emotional, and spiritual. 

 The contrast between David and Mary in today’s readings is significant. God is inviting us to allow Him to make us holy.  God is inviting us to go beyond what we can comprehend, beyond what we would do on our own and like Mary surrender to God’s plan for our salvation.  It is about allowing Jesus to be born in our hearts. To nurture that growth and allow it to transform us into a person after God’s own heart and the bring Christ to the world just as Mary did.

Tomorrow we will come to church, and we will hear the story of Jesus’s birth.  We will marvel at the baby Jesus and sing songs of wonder and praise.  What we forget in all of that is Jesus was totally dependent on Mary and Joseph for everything.  The Son of God, from whom all creation was made could not feed himself, could not walk, could, not talk, could not change himself.  For Christ to be born in the hearts of unbelievers He depends on us to tell the world what He can do if only we invite Him into the mess of our lives.

We cannot be like King David and be satisfied with building a place where God dwells a place we look upon.  NO, we must allow God to dwell in our hearts and bring Him into the world.