The Three Kings of Salvation History

Today, the last Sunday before Christmas, I would like to cover the whole Bible in ten minutes, the entire history of salvation in twelve minutes. It’s really quite simple—we can sum up the whole Bible in three kings: Adam, David, and Jesus. I’m grateful to Fr. Robert Barron, for his homily this Sunday, found on his Word on Fire website, whose ideas I’m using. Use his website often.

King # 1: Adam. He was the first man, and his wife Eve, the first woman. To both of them God said: “be fruitful; have dominion over the whole Earth.” God planted a Garden, east of Eden and gave Adam “dominion,” that is, Kingship, over this garden. He was to tend it, make it fruitful, to exercise stewardship over God’s immense gifts. But Adam failed. He was to exercise dominion over the animals, but one animal, the serpent, exercised dominion over Adam. Adam failed to be the kind of king, the kind of steward, that God had asked him to be.

King #2: David. He was chosen by God and entrusted with the same task as that of Adam—to exercise dominion over God’s people. God asked him to shape a rabble of quarrelling individuals into a fruitful, peaceful, and ordered community. David was basically a good king, but he too failed in some dramatic ways. You probably know the story of Bathsheba. King David makes his appearance in today’s first reading. He wants to build temple. But God asks David, “should you build me a house to live in?” How can man build a house for God? It is God who fashions his own temple in man. “It was I who was with you,” God tells David. I will fix a place for my people. I will establish a house for you.

And then God makes this promise: I will raise up a son after you, and I will make his kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he a son to me. David never built a temple in Jerusalem, but his son Solomon did, in 957 BC. However, because of Solomon’s sins, like his father’s, the kingdom itself was divided by civil war after his reign. Eventually, the divided kingdom of Israel fell to the Babylonians in 587BC, and then to the Greeks in 320BC, and finally to the Romans.

King #3: Jesus. God’s promise to David was not really about David’s immediate son Solomon, but a child to be born a thousand years later, but still of David’s own bloodline: Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus was both son of David and Son of God, because he was born of a virgin. Like Adam and David before him, Jesus was given the kingly role of building a house for God among his people, of restoring the lost Garden of God, of bringing about a fruitful and peacefully ordered kingdom. But unlike Adam and David, who largely failed in their kingship, Jesus would not fail, because he would not sin. It is Jesus who has restored the lost Kingdom, who has replanted the fruitful garden that Adam lost.

And that’s the whole Bible. That’s the story of our salvation. But there is one more detail: the women. Adam was not to exercise his kingship alone: God gave him Eve to help, as his Queen. But it was Eve who encouraged him to sin, to give up his kingly dignity. The very woman who had so much potential to help Adam—she too failed to help him. In a similar way, David sinned with a woman, Bathsheba, who did not resist his sin. She participated in it. And Jesus--no less did he depend on the help of a woman, his mother Mary. But unlike Eve, unlike Bathsheba, Mary did not sin. She helped him. She never said “no” to God. She said only “Yes” to God. And so God was able to build his temple within her, to plant his Garden of Paradise in her heart.

God wants to dwell in each of us; he wants to plant his garden within each of our hearts. He wants to transform the prisons of this world into temples of peace and joy, and the wasteland of our world into a garden that surpasses Eden. He comes to us daily, like he came to Mary in her home at Nazareth. If we say “yes” to him, he will come in. If we say “no,” he will stay out. He courts Mary, not forcing himself on her. She surrenders herself to him, and the Holy Spirit rushes upon her. From that moment, the still center of history, humanity’s redeemer is conceived in her womb and begins to grow. He is still growing, in the Church he founded.

The Lord God awaits our permission, our “yes” to build his temple within us. He asks us, as he asked the young Virgin Mary, for the gift of our purity, the gift of our will, so that he can plant his garden within us.

One final thought: about silence. God comes to us in silence, not in noise. He came to Mary in the silence of her room, where she was probably praying. In silence, the plants grow, and the stars turn, and the sun rises. In silence the Son of God was born, in the quiet time of the night, when all of the world was at peace. In silence, he will come to us. We need times of silence in our lives, especially in this last week before Christmas. The constant noise and entertainment of our culture is from the devil. He wants to shout down the quiet Word of God. Make a space for God to speak to you this week. Get alone, turn off every electronic device (iPhone, radio, CD player, MP3 player, TV, iPad, Xbox, etc). Turn it all off, get alone, and just let God come to you. He wants to build his house, he wants to plant his garden, in the silence of your heart.

We talk too much. And these days we have so many ways to do it: emails, cellphones, text messages, twitters, Facebooks, YouTubes, blogs. We hear people chattering on our TV’s, MP3 players, home radios, car stereos, iPhones--even at the gas pumps. In contrast to all this noise, we have St. Joseph. Question: How many words of St. Joseph are recorded in Bible? Answer: Zero. We never hear a word from Joseph.

It is this silence, this serenity, of St. Joseph that we admire most about him. Joseph is the Quiet Man; a man of deeds, not words. This passage from Matthew’s Gospel is the most we ever see of Joseph in the entire Bible. In this last Sunday before Christmas, Holy Mother Church points to the quiet virtue of St. Joseph, spouse and guardian of Mary, and protector of the Child within her. Without him, Christmas would not have happened.

Joseph finds himself in a difficult situation. The woman he loves more than himself is found to be with child, and he knows nothing about it. He knows her, though, and he knows she could not have betrayed him, nor sinned against God. Mary is discreetly silent about this pregnancy, and Joseph realizes that she will not defend herself. If he divorces her publicly, he will be declaring that the child is not his, and she will be killed for adultery. If he divorces her quietly, he will be declaring that the baby is his and bring double disgrace upon himself. He had decided to take the disgrace upon himself in order to protect Mary, when he had a dream.

An angel speaks the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” Could Joseph have known that he was being asked to provide, protect, and defend the Divine Son of God? Could he have known that world history, indeed the salvation of humanity, depended on this pregnancy? I don’t think Joseph could have known all that. All he knew was that God had asked him to take his wife into his home. So he got up, and he did it.

We talk far too much, and we do far too little. Joseph does not talk about God’s will; he simply gets up and does it. Think how much talk there is in America, for instance, about protecting children. We debate in House and Senate; we argue on talk radio, Oprah, Hannity, Larry King, and all the other TV talkers lament about what is lacking and what is needed in Gen X. And while we vigorously discuss, young people are perishing. It is not the gang violence, the drugs or the porn that is killing them. It is the absence of their fathers. Almost 4,000 children die each day in America, children just like Jesus in Mary’s womb. And they die because their fathers are not there for them.

St. Joseph can help us. He can help us men, in particular, to be faithful to our wives and children. He is a man among men, more a father even though he raised a son he did not beget, and more a husband even though he never touched his wife. He listened to God, did not make excuses, and did what God asked. What is God asking of you? Perhaps he wants you to spend an hour a day with your children. Perhaps he wants you to lead the family to the adoration chapel once a week. Perhaps he wants you to begin tithing. Perhaps he just wants you to lose 20 pounds. Joseph can teach us men to stop making excuses, to get up, and do what God asks.

Today is the Durando family’s last Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s. Their third child, Sophia Gianna, will receive her first Holy Communion at this Mass. We will never forget Sophia Gianna, because her patroness’ window watches over the choir area. At the risk of embarrassing the father of this family, I must point out that Dino chose to hold his farewell dinner in connection with children’s adoration, the best I have ever attended. Like St. Joseph, for whose painting here he served as model, he stays behind the scenes, providing for Jesus. We wish him godspeed as he moves his family to Kansas City.

Today Holy Mother Church celebrates Gaudete Sunday, when the priests all wear rose-colored vestments. Gaudete in Latin means “rejoice,” and indeed St. Paul in our first reading, from Philippians (Fr. Larry likes to call it St. Paul’s letter to the Filipinos), commands us to rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say it: rejoice!” Sometimes it takes great effort to smile, and so St. Paul insists that it is a simple Christian duty is to persist in joy and hope, because the Lord is near.
How near is he? Well, you see this large picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe by the tabernacle? Today is also, by happy coincidence, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Let me tell you the story…

In 1531, the Spanish conquest of what is now Mexico was annihilating the indigenous population, known as the Mexicas. Gunpowder had enabled the Spaniards to reduce a highly-developed peoples to slavery. The Mexica had lost their culture, their dignity, and worst of all, their religion. They had no further reason to live. It was at this lowest point that Jesus sent his Holy Mother to console this people.

On December 9, 1531, at a hill named Tepeyac, five miles from what is now downtown Mexico City, a middle-aged native American of small stature, named Juan Diego (Cuauht-lat-oat-zin in his own tongue—the eagle-that-talks), saw a beautiful shining lady, radiantly smiling. She appeared four times, and on the last apparition, on December 12, she pointed to an extraordinary bloom of Castillian roses among the desert rocks. Juan Diego picked them up, the Lady arranged them in his corn-fibre tilma, and he carried them to the Spanish Bishop, Juan Zumarraga. When he opened his tilma to spill the roses, the image we are familiar with as Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on the tilma. The bishop fell to his knees, speechless, weeping.

Today, Mexico is the only country where the Europeans and Native Americans have not exterminated each other. Unlike every other country where Europeans encountered indigenous peoples, in Mexico they learned to live as brothers, even to love each other. They intermarried, and form what became a new race, the Mexican culture.

Our Lady of Guadalupe came to heal the war between Spaniard and Aztec. She can heal the wars of our time. In the image of Our lady of Guadalupe, the woman wears a black sash about her waist. Aztec women of Juan Diego’s time wore this sash about their womb to indicate they were pregnant. This woman is to bear a child, a son who will be the Prince of Peace. Your family, and the family of man, must turn to this Mother and Child. We must pray the rosary, we must come to Mass, and come to confession.

Juan Diego went three times to the Bishop of Mexico City with the good news of the Lady’s appearance. The Spaniard did not believe the Indian—thought he must be drunk. Juan Diego went back to the Lady and said: it’s no use. The Spaniards will never understand us. They must only destroy us. And Our Lady said to Juan Diego: Juan Diegito, el mas pequeno de mis hijos. No estoy aqui que soy tu madre? My dear little Juanito, the smallest of my sons. Am I not here who am your mother?

Juan Diego spent the rest of his life as guardian of the Image that you see here. He built a little chapel and lived with it until he died in 1548, at age 73. In these years, Mexico’s wounds healed. Spaniards and Indians began to accept each other, realizing that they all had one Mother who loved them, and one Father in heaven, and one Lord and Savior.

Our Lady of Guadalupe taught Juan Diego, and all the world, how to rejoice even in the darkest hour. Is she not here, who is our mother? What have we to fear? God sends her to show us the way of true joy, a happiness nothing and no one can take from us. Rejoice in the Lord always, she teaches us: the Lord, my Son, is near.

John the Baptist emerged from the desert looking like a homeless man from under the Ninth street Bridge in Modesto. He preached with intensity about the coming wrath, the judgment by fire for those who flouted God’s law, an intensity that must have seemed like madness to some. What does John the Baptist have to do with Christmas or Advent? Why does the Church have us read this gospel in Advent?

Jesus comes to us from a cradle, a sign of the coming mercy of God. He too preached about the coming judgment, but a judgment of forgiveness, salvation, and reconciliation. Rather than condemning the disobedient, he said “Father Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus came to save us by dying for us.

John the Baptist and Jesus bring us the same Gospel, but in different terms. One speaks of wrath, the other speaks of peace, but both speak of fire. God’s fire is “unquenchable;” his thirst for our love is unquenchable. It is this fire that emanates from the crib at Bethlehem. It is this fire that illuminates the night. It is this fire of God’s infinite love that lights up every Christmas. Last night Modesto held the “parade of lights” through downtown. It is a season of light because our God is a consuming fire.

The baby in Bethlehem teaches us not to be afraid of the fire. We have nothing to fear if we pray, and pray together. If Advent says anything to us, it says that we must come together to pray, as families, as friends, as communities. Only prayer together can save us from the coming wrath. For surely there is a great wrath coming. There is a nameless fear in each of us, a dread that something very bad is awaiting us in life. When will the next disaster strike, when will our next 9-11 happen, when will my friends all desert me? Let us take refuge in the stable at Bethlehem, in our homes and in our parishes, around the cradle of Jesus.

The Challenge:
We hold many gatherings of friends and family in this season. We want to capture some of the light and warmth of Bethlehem in this darkest, coldest time of the year. I ask you to make time in your holiday gatherings for prayer. Open your meals with a blessing, and close them with a prayer of thanksgiving. Say a decade of the rosary together after dinner, before everyone leaves, or read a passage from Scripture, like Linus in a Charlie Brown Christmas. You will be surprised how much light and warmth, how much true love, it will bring to your gatherings this Christmas.