“The Fix Isn't In”

Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent  6 December 2015

“All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  Luke 3:6

Pop Quiz. The category is Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

True or False? Tiny Tim has always been the youngest and sickliest of the Cratchits’ children.

Answer?

False.

That’s because, before settling on Tiny Tim, what were the names Dickens tried on for size? Little Larry. Puny Pete. Small Sam.

How Tiny Tim ever won out beats me. My vote is for Puny Pete. Yes, I think Puny Pete could have done a yeoman’s job squeaking out, “God bless us, everyone!” And yet, now Tiny Tim is every bit an icon of Christmas culture as A Christmas Carol itself.

In fact, according to Boston Globe columnist Joan Wickersham, A Christmas Carol isn’t just an icon. It’s a formula Dickens invented for an entire genre of holiday tales that now gild the tinsel.

In these stories, Christmas is universally transformative: Things are bad. Then Christmas comes along and makes everything good.

For example, Christmas turns nasty people into nice people. Take Scrooge. After his run-in with the three Christmas spirits, Dickens tells us, “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”

Then there’s the Grinch who stole Christmas. What’s his starting point? “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville … did not!” But come Christmas, “in Whoville, they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!”

What’s more, Christmas turns depressed people into happy people. Look at Charlie Brown in ─ what else? ─ A Charlie Brown Christmas.

And where would suicidal people be without James Stewart’s George Bailey in the Christmas staple I love to hate, It’s a Wonderful Life?

Speaking of cynics, Christmas turns cynics like me into believers. That’s the whole point of Miracle on 34^th Street.

As Wickersham argues, this Christmas genre “makes all kinds of things happen that we don’t really believe in. It isn’t about what we believe. It’s about what we wish we could believe.”

Now, for the churchy set in the run-up to Christmas, there’s a hefty genre of tales that grip our Advent imagination, especially, Isaiah’s platform of transformation re-purposed by John the Baptist: Every valley filled. Every mountain and hill made low. The crooked straight. All topped by the most preposterous claim of all: “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Great stuff. What’s not to like? But I’m stuck on “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” No one left out. Really? That’s something I’m not sure everyone believes. I’m not even sure everyone wishes we could believe it.

Because the “salvation of God”: What does it mean?

That depends, because “salvation” has been hijacked by the likes of televangelists and people with a much clearer understanding of the mind of God than I have or even God has let on. These sanguine purveyors of certitude expend a lot of bandwidth ─ and hot air ─ getting right one talking point and one alone: getting “saved.”

That is, to hear them talk, the project of every single one of us ─ not us together ─ but each of us as individuals (me-me-me) from cradle to grave is to “get saved.” To “get saved” from the fires of hell, or, to put a more positive spin on it, to “get into” heaven.

Think I’m just talking about Pat Robertson spin-offs? Check out Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, former Vatican spokesman on healthcare issues. In the magazine Pontifex, he pronounced something along the lines, “Without the shadow of a doubt, transgendered persons will not enter heaven.”

I would be interested to learn how the cardinal might reconcile his take on a particular class of people being barred from “getting into heaven” with John the Baptist’s bold and unqualified assertion that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

And John, let’s remember, may read like a quintessential hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, but he preaches that God intends that all ─ “all flesh” ─ enjoy the blessings of God’s kingdom. Because John, Luke tells us, “went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance” to reach, in essence, the tipping point that would trigger real world, macro transformation: God’s kingdom come at last in its fullness. No one left out. No one left behind. That’s transformation.

Transformation. A non-negotiable of 4^th century Church Father, Basil the Great. What makes Basil so “great”? He asks questions like:

What keeps us from giving now? The hungry neighbor is dying now. The naked neighbor is freezing now. The homeless neighbor is abandoned now. And we want to wait until tomorrow? We do wrong to everyone we could help by failing to help.

In other words, achieving justice ─ what all are owed as persons made in the image and likeness of God: Is that bedrock Christian impulse something we believe? Or is it something we wish we could believe?

So, are we looking at some pie-in-the-sky, warmed-over Scrooge-Grinch-Charlie Brown-George Bailey-Miracle on 34^th Street transformation in ourselves and all creation we wish we could believe? Or do we really believe it?

Take the scourge of almost weekly mass shootings in our communities. People, pundits, politicians have been all over the map in reacting to the horror in San Bernardino last week: 14 innocent lives taken … 21 hospitalized … the two shooters ─ two lone-wolf terrorists ─ ­dead.

My hunch is that most people would agree, as I stressed last week in the wake of the Planned Parenthood mass shooting in Colorado Springs: Enough is enough. End mass shootings. End gun violence ─ its causes, its overkill weaponry, its loopholes ─ once and for all.

That’s transformation talk. Sounds like we believe transformation is possible, even inevitable: transformation from the bloody slaughter we’re relentlessly witnessing … to a violence-free future that not only staunches the bleeding of the innocent and the guilty alike, but prevents it altogether.

Or is it transformation we wish we could believe?

Case in point: Of 16 candidates in next year’s presidential contest who commented on the San Bernardino carnage ─ prior to knowing the identities of the attackers ─ 13 reacted with condolences (“Our thoughts are with the victims’ families”) and calls for prayer … only. Prayer and condolences ─ only ─ to combat the swelling crimson tide of mass shootings.

Now, is it bad to pray for the victims and offer condolences to the families of those gunned-down? Of course not. But only three candidates of the 16 advocated taking action ─ legislative action ─ to fix the problem: Stand up to the NRA. Enact substantive gun safety laws to end the unfettered spread of ever-more-powerful firearms ─ a pandemic that relies on the fatal illogic spouted by the arm-yourself-to-the-teeth mob: “Guns aren’t the problem. Guns are the solution.”

Complication: Caught in this snare of spiraling violence, moral leadership demands doing something. And not just something, but doing the decisive and heroic thing: finally standing up to the greed of weapons peddlers … freeing the hostages they have taken in Congress … drafting and passing sensible-but-effective gun control laws ─ like banning the unevenly-regulated sale of military-grade assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and the handguns of choice used by criminals. And certainly banning gun sales to anyone on the terrorist watchlist. But that seems to be a bridge too far for trigger-happy elected officials … or officials sent to Washington by trigger-happy voters.

In other words, leadership ─ doing the right thing ─ and doing the right thing, by God ─ is believing in transformation that overcomes obstacles in order to advance God’s kingdom. “Every mountain and hill made low,” as John the Baptist preached.

I mean, why tell the story of John the Baptist at all, if we don’t at least wonder: John stood up to Herod. Can’t we stand up to the NRA?

Prayers, thoughts, and condolences, then? Great. Knock yourself out. But minus taking a stand, that’s just window-dressing … transformation, at best, we wish we could believe.

Or, as Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted after the San Bernardino Massacre, “Our ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Our ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if we do nothing … again.”

That means The New York Daily News front page headline the day after the attack got it right. The headline was the tabloid’s entire front page and may as well have come from a full-throated John the Baptist: “God Isn’t Fixing This.”

Meaning: Free-floating prayers, thoughts, and condolences not tethered to comprehensive ─ read: transformative ─ gun-control reform? That’s throwing in the towel. That’s thinking God ─ and God alone ─ is going to fix this.

Once again. God. Isn’t. Fixing this.

Only people, convinced that our shared survival depends on “beating swords into plowshares” are going to fix this.

Only people ─ a grassroots, groundswell of people ─ some acting on God’s behalf (like each of us) ─ are going to fix this.

Only people ─ courageous people ─ committed, passionate, armed with facts, organized ─ are going to fix this.

Only people, who truly believe in transformation by acting on that belief ─ lobbying on that belief ─ voting on that belief ─ will create the reality: “All flesh ─ all! ─ will see ─ live to see … the salvation of God.”

Amen.