Homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent, 2013

HOMILY FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

Have you ever had dreams so vivid they seemed real? When I was laid up without a left hip I would have vivid dreams of being able to walk. Unless you experience it, it is kind of hard to wrap your head around not having a hip. When you don’t have a hip, the leg just kind of hangs there attached to the rest of the body by muscle and tendons. You can’t put any weight on it, because without a hip, the leg won’t hold you up. You can’t raise your leg without a hip. To get into bed, I use to have to take my right foot and hook it under my left ankle and pull both legs up into bed. To get out of bed, I had to take my right leg and push my left leg over the edge of the bed, and then pivot to a sitting position on the side of the bed. And, of course, I had to hop on my right leg to get around. The only time I was free from my hipless world was when I slept.

I would have these vivid dreams of walking from my house on Central Ave N, down to Main Street. Sometimes I go to Patty’s Place for coffee and oatmeal raisin cookies. There were times I would go to the library to browse through the new books. Other times I would sit on the bleachers at Memorial Park to watch a softball game or walk over to St Wenceslaus to spend some time in church. And, sometimes I would walk to one of our local drinking establishments for a beer, then walk home. In these dreams I could not only walk, I could run, skip and jump, and I did all of this in these dreams knowing that I did them without my left hip. Imprisoned by my own body, it was in these dreams that I found the freedom that my illness had taken from me. It was at night, asleep, that I found freedom from the prison of my own body. Of course, eventually, I would awaken, push my left leg out of bed with my right foot, swivel around in bed, sit up, take hold of my walker, hop up on my right leg and begin my daily regimen of antibiotics, and hopping from bed to chair to bathroom and so forth.

In the scriptures today we hear of both prisons and dreams.

 In the first reading, Isaiah paints for us the dream of what the Messianic world will become. Our world imprisoned, crippled and broken by conflict, disease, injury, hate and despair will be transformed and made whole by the coming of the Messiah. St James urges his Christian community to patiently wait for the return of Jesus. For when Jesus returns, all of their dreams will not only be fulfilled, but will be surpassed. In the gospel, we find the prophet, John the Baptist, literally held in prison. John realizes that his life’s dream has been fulfilled as he hear reports of Jesus healing the deaf, the blind, and the lame, cleansing lepers and raising the dead. Everything that John longed for, everything to which his life’s work had been dedicated, everything for which John had patiently waited has been fulfilled in Jesus.

We don’t literally have to be in jail to be imprisoned. Some of us are imprisoned physically by the limitations of our own bodies. Some of us are imprisoned emotionally, consumed by fear, bitterness, anger, hate, and hopelessness. Some of us may be imprisoned by an absence of relationships with others, broken relationships with significant others, or abusive relationships. Some of us are imprisoned by cynicism, prejudice, and apathy. Some of us are imprisoned by addictions both behavioral and chemical. Some of us are imprisoned by poverty and powerlessness, while others are imprisoned by wealth and power. The one thing we all have in common is that we all have our own prisons in which we find ourselves imprisoned.

The other thing we all hold in common is that we all dream to be free from these prisons. Our lives may be filled with dreams of what we hope might be. These dreams may be of relationships with others, or healed relationships that have been broken. These dreams may be for better health, or increased security, or wealth or an advancement in our career. Sadly, many of these dreams may remain unfulfilled in our lives, or in fulfilling them, we find that in the end, they were empty dreams.

The gospel tells us that it is only in Jesus that we are able to find ourselves free from the prisons in which we are held. It is in Jesus that all healing is found. It is only in Jesus that hope abounds. I am no longer imprisoned by my body as I was two years ago. With or without a hip, I still can’t run, skip or jump. But I found that the only dream worth fulfilling in life is that of becoming one with the God who created me. There is an old adage that says, all roads lead to Rome. I would like to adapt that adage to say, all dreams worth fulfilling lead only to Jesus Christ.